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Handbook of Population pp 775–789Cite as

29 Political Demography

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Part of the book series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research ((HSSR))

Abstract

Political demography addresses both the political determinants and the political consequences of demographic change. Over the past few decades the salience of these topics has risen to high levels in most countries and world regions. Passionate controversies about political demography have posed serious challenges to governments, governing elites, international and multilateral organizations, and longstanding provisions of international law.

The key topics covered in this chapter include the following:

  • The political and related social and economic consequences of changes in fertility rates, population size, composition, and density, including differentials among ethnic and religious communities and their impacts on domestic social and political relations, central-local relations, regional income disparities, and political representation;

  • The political consequences and responses to rising levels of migration, both within and across national borders;

  • The impacts of differing rates of national demographic change upon military and economic power;

  • The efficacy and political acceptability of increasingly common government policies designed to affect the size, composition, distribution, and growth rate of national populations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A fourth country among the 15 most populous, Japan, possesses the economic and technical capabilities to become a nuclear power but has chosen not to do so. The other 11 most populous countries are India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Mexico, Ethiopia, Philippines, Egypt, and Vietnam.

  2. 2.

    The current wave of globalization is by no means the first; an earlier wave about a century ago ended with a bang at the onset of World War I. That globalization wave too was accompanied by large-scale international migrations over many decades, and especially from the 1880s to 1914. After the end of the War, political decisions in receiving countries established new policies to more effectively control immigration.

  3. 3.

    They acknowledge that many states after World War II acceded to international treaties establishing the rights of would-be refugees to claim asylum, while a smaller number of states, most notably in Europe, have signed treaties voluntarily ceding some of their sovereign control over immigration to the transnational European Union. These decisions, they note, are themselves expressions of the national sovereignty of each state to accede or not.

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  1. Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Michael S. Teitelbaum

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  1. Department Sociology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Dudley L. Poston Jr.

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Teitelbaum, M.S. (2019). 29 Political Demography. In: Poston, D.L. (eds) Handbook of Population. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10910-3_30

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