Political Demography

Abstract

Political demography is a disciplinary field devoted to the study of population size, composition, and distribution in relation to both government and politics. The focus is on the political consequences of population change, especially the effects of population change on the demands made upon governments, on the performance of governments, on the distribution of political power within states, and on the distribution of national power among states. Political demography is concerned not only with the facts and figures of population—that is, fertility, mortality, and migration rates—but also with the knowledge and attitudes that people and their governments have toward population issues. Unfortunately, these issues have not generated adequate interest among both demographers and political scientists, not to mention economists and researchers in general. This is because political demography lies uncomfortably at the boundary between demography and political science. Political demography deserves serious and thoughtful scholarly attention because many, if not most, of the central policy concerns can be approached directly from the population perspective, including the key dimensions of population dynamics such as politics of size, fertility rates, life expectancy and the outcomes of success, race, war, migration and migration impact on the size and structure of populations, and population density. These core population characteristics can be related to many other attributes ranging from urbanization and mortality to gender, religion, education, productivity, health, and conflict. These characteristics are, in turn, essential for the analysis of themes like elections, social security, economic convergence, political development, and environmental degradation.