Global Political Demography

This open access book draws the big picture of how population change interplays with politics across the world from 1990 to 2040. Leading social scientists from a wide range of disciplines discuss, for the first time, all major political and policy aspects of population change as they play out differently in each major world region: North and South America; Sub-Saharan Africa and the MENA region; Western and East Central Europe; Russia, Belarus and Ukraine; East Asia; Southeast Asia; subcontinental India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; Australia and New Zealand. These macro-regional analyses are completed by cross-cutting global analyses of migration, religion and poverty, and age profiles and intra-state conflicts. From all angles, this book shows how strongly contextualized the political management and the political consequences of population change are. While long-term population ageing and short-term migration fluctuations present structural conditions, political actors play a key role in (mis-)managing, manipulating, and (under-)planning population change, which in turn determines how citizens in different groups react.

The field of political demography - the politics of population change - is dramatically underrepresented in political science. At a time when demographic changes - aging in the rich world, youth bulges in the developing world, ethnic and religious shifts, migration, and urbanization - are waxing as never before, this neglect is especially glaring and starkly contrasts with the enormous interest coming from policymakers and the media. "Ten years ago, [demography] was hardly on the radar screen," remarks Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, two contributors to this volume. "Today," they continue, "it dominates almost any discussion of America's long-term fiscal, economic, or foreign-policy direction." Demography is the most predictable of the social sciences: children born in the last five years will be the new workers, voters, soldiers, and potential insurgents of 2025 and the political elites of the 2050s. Whether in the West or the developing world, political scientists urgently need to understand the tectonics of demography in order to grasp the full context of today's political developments. This book begins to fill the gap from a global and historical perspective and with the hope that scholars and policymakers will take its insights on board to develop enlightened policies for our collective future.

"A timely, stimulating, and very readable volume." - Journal of International Migration and Integration "Essays in the true sense ... they are readable, wide-ranging historically and geographically." - Population and Development Review "The essays are clearly written, well-reasoned and contain a wealth of examples...It will be read with profit by students who are looking for a readable and sensible overview of the field." - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies "Over the past decade, the impacts of demographic trends on international security and on peaceful relations between and within states have come to the fore in ways not seen since the aftermath of World War II. An evolving and more complex set of changes in the size, distribution, and composition of populations has become the basis for a new look at the security effects of changes in the size, distribution, and composition of populations. This book is an attempt to lay out the new look, to take issue with some of the prevailing views on the political consequences of population change and to suggest where the concerns are realistic and where they are not." (From the Preface) This book not only offers a magisterial analysis of the political effects of the dramatic population changes that are taking place in countries all around the world, it also represents the testimony of one of the most distinguished scholars in the field of migration and population studies. Myron Weiner, former Professor of Political Science at MIT and Chair of the External Research Advisory Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Michael S. Teitelbaum, a demographer, is Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York.

Exploring how demographic dynamism continues to shape the character of societies, this forward-looking Research Agenda offers insights into how the human population has undergone fundamental demographic shifts, and the impact these have had on how we organize ourselves politically, the design of our economic systems, and even our societal relationships.

This original and panoramic book proposes that the underlying forces of demography and globalisation will shortly reverse three multi-decade global trends – it will raise inflation and interest rates, but lead to a pullback in inequality. “Whatever the future holds”, the authors argue, “it will be nothing like the past”. Deflationary headwinds over the last three decades have been primarily due to an enormous surge in the world’s available labour supply, owing to very favourable demographic trends and the entry of China and Eastern Europe into the world’s trading system. This book demonstrates how these demographic trends are on the point of reversing sharply, coinciding with a retreat from globalisation. The result? Ageing can be expected to raise inflation and interest rates, bringing a slew of problems for an over-indebted world economy, but is also anticipated to increase the share of labour, so that inequality falls. Covering many social and political factors, as well as those that are more purely macroeconomic, the authors address topics including ageing, dementia, inequality, populism, retirement and debt finance, among others. This book will be of interest and understandable to anyone with an interest on where the world’s economy may be going.

Includes statistics.

A collection of recent essays and articles, Demography and Democracy is Himani Bannerji's engagement with the nationalist currents that have become such crucial topics of discussion and debate in recent years. Topics covered include Hindu nationalism, Zionism, subaltern studies, the novels of Rabindranath Tagore, and issues of knowledge, ideology, and representation around the US invasion of Afghanistan. The essays are written from an anti-imperialist Marxist feminist standpoint and offer a bracing critique of contemporary ideologies.

Demographic study and the idea of a “population” was developed and modified over the course of the twentieth century, mirroring the political, social, and cultural situations and aspirations of different societies. This growing field adapted itself to specific policy concerns and was therefore never apolitical, despite the protestations of practitioners that demography was “natural.” Demographics were transformed into public policies that shaped family planning, population growth, medical practice, and environmental conservation. While covering a variety of regions and time periods, the essays in this book share an interest in the transnational dynamics of emerging demographic discourses and practices. Together, they present a global picture of the history of demographic knowledge.