734077

research-article20172017
RAP0010.1177/2053168017734077Research & PoliticsPotter

Research Article
Research and Politics

Locating the government: Capital cities October-December 2017: 1­–7

© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168017734077
DOI: 10.1177/2053168017734077
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Alan Potter

Abstract
The location of the national capital is frequently contentious in domestic politics. Almost 30% of countries house their
capitals outside of their largest city and 11 countries have relocated their capitals since 1960. This paper argues that
locating the capital outside of the largest urban center may reduce civil conflict by limiting the ability of any single faction
to dominate the government. When the government is less afraid of large urban populations in the capital, it is better
able to appease multiple factions. Cross-national evidence supports this argument in that locating the capital outside of
a major city is associated with a significant reduction in both violent and non-violent civil conflict.

Keywords
Civil conflict, urban agglomerations, capital cities

Introduction
In August 2014, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
of Argentina suggested that it may be time to relocate the
capital from Buenos Aires to Santiago del Estero, a city
with only 250,000 people in the interior of the country
(Romero, 2014). The announcement was widely viewed
as an attempt to outmaneuver political competitors and
appease the interior provinces which have long viewed
Buenos Aires as a separate and privileged part of the
country.
The case of Argentina is in no way unique. In a host of
cases, including the US, Brazil and Australia, the capital
was located outside of a major metropolitan area in an
effort to appease rivalries among geographically centered
political factions. This paper argues that locating the capi-
tal outside of the largest urban area may reduce civil con-
flict by limiting the control of the largest urban area over
the government and, thereby, making the government
more responsive to factions outside the largest urban area
of the country.
The empirical section analyzes the relationship between
capital location and civil conflict and finds that having the
capital outside of the largest urban center is a significant
predictor of lower occurrence of civil conflict.
The paper proceeds in three sections. In the first section
I outline a theory of why there may be a relationship
between capital location and civil conflict. In the second I
provide a preliminary empirical investigation into the rela-
tionship between capital location and civil conflict. In the
last section I conclude.
Capital location and civil conflict
Nearly 30% of countries have their capital located outside
of their largest city. In most of these countries, there are two
competing urban centers or regions of the country. In the
case of Canada, the US, New Zealand, Brazil, Nigeria and
Pakistan, locating the capital outside of a major urban area
was a compromise between rival factions that were geo-
graphically concentrated. Even in cases where there are not
two competing urban centers, the primary axis of political
competition is often between the largest city and popula-
tions outside of that city (Myers and Dietz, 2002). For
example, the eventual choice of making Washington DC
the capital of the US was very much the result of efforts to
appease both the industrial North and the slave-owning
agricultural economies of the South.
Independent Researcher, New York, USA
Corresponding author:
Alan Potter, 27 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021, USA.
Email: afp250@nyu.edu

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2 Research and Politics 
The argument of this paper is that if the government is
located outside of the largest urban area, it will be less domi-
nated by the interests of the largest urban area, and better able
to appease multiple factions and therefore reduce civil con-
flict. The argument rests on the assumption that governments
are more responsive to the population in the capital city due to
the ability of urban populations to topple the government. If
the government is not dominated by a single political faction
(i.e. the urban population of the largest city) then the govern-
ment may be more responsive to competing factions. This
broader responsiveness may lend itself to forms of power-
sharing that reduce the potential for civil conflict.
The assumption that urban populations in the capital city
are able to exert control over the government (dispropor-
tionate to their share of total population) is supported by a
range of existing research. Arend Lijphart’s work on conso-
cialism discusses the relative advantage to factions that live
in or near the seat of government in regards to influencing
national politics. Grofman and Lijphart (2002) see this
advantage as a possible reason why in many modern
democracies (e.g. US, Norway, Brazil) the population of
the capital is underrepresented in the government (i.e. to
offset the advantage of living in the capital).1 Similarly, in
the seminal work of Bates (1981), the author documents
how dictatorships in Africa are willing to exploit their rural
populations so as to subsidize the population in the capital
because the primary threat to the dictator’s survival comes
from the urban population. Empirically, Campante et al.
(2013) find that conflict is more likely to be successful in
dislodging a non-democratic government when it is closer
to the capital city.2 A number of authors have also noted that
for one faction to win a civil war within a country, it is
almost always necessary to capture the capital city (Gugler,
1982; Huntington, 2006). This may also increase the lever-
age of factions located within the largest urban area if the
capital is the largest urban area.
Case studies of countries that have shifted their capitals
also support the assumption that governments may be forced
to respond to the interests of the capital city when the popula-
tion of the capital city is large relative to the population of the
rest of the country. The immediate impetus for the US mov-
ing its capital out of Philadelphia was that when an angry
mob of pensioners convened outside an early congressional
session, the governor of Pennsylvania sympathized with the
mob and refused to use force to remove them. The govern-
ment did not want to be subject to the will of one faction in
the country (e.g. angry pensioners in Pennsylvania).
Therefore, the government established a new capital in a city
created for that purpose (Washington, DC).
The potential for urban uprisings is a common motiva-
tion for moving the capital out of the largest city, though
not a reason that leaders tend to publicly admit to. In the
cases of Myanmar3 and Kazakhstan there is no convincing
state-sponsored explanation for recent capital shifts out of
major urban areas. However, in both cases, the threat of
urban uprisings is a plausible explanation (Schatz, 2004).4
Similarly, government officials in Iran have recently sug-
gested that it may become necessary to move the govern-
ment out of Tehran because of fears of earthquakes.
However, it is believed that the fault lines may be a cover to
move the government to an area that is less susceptible to
popular uprisings (The Telegraph, 2009).
In other cases, countries have chosen to locate their cap-
ital outside of the largest urban area of the city in order to
not advantage that urban area over the rest of the county. In
these cases, the capital is often located in a small or newly
built city in an underdeveloped region of the country in
order to be outside of any competing urban areas or geo-
graphic regions. Again, in the case of the US, shifting the
capital out of Philadelphia was an effort to avoid control by
the local urban population but also to avoid being located in
the strong holds of either of the major competing factions
of the country at the time: the industrial North or the slave-
owning agricultural South. Similarly, in Brazil, the capital
was shifted to the newly constructed Brasilia in the interior
of Brazil to develop the interior of the nation; however, the
initial impetus for moving the capital was a constitutional
provision that said the capital should be moved outside of
Rio de Janeiro to keep that city from dominating the
national government. Similarly, Canada (Ottawa) and
Australia (Canberra) located their capitals in remote areas
of their respective nations ostensibly for development pur-
poses. However, in both cases the initial impetus was the
increasing rivalry between the large cites of Toronto and
Montreal in Canada, and Sydney and Melbourne in
Australia (Schatz, 2004).
Thus, the primary motivations for shifting the capital of
a country out of the largest urban area is to limit the control
of the largest urban area over the government. The argu-
ment of this paper is that by doing this, the government may
be able to better manage the competing interests of geo-
graphically concentrated political and economic interests
through compromise or forms of power sharing. This, in
turn, will lead to a lower likelihood of civil conflict. While
this makes intuitive sense, recent work by Campante et al.
(2013) and Campante (2014) has argued that isolated capi-
tals lead to unaccountable governments and misgovernance
through a very similar mechanism as the one proposed in
this paper. Campante et al. (2013) model the relationship
between capital cities and governance based on the assump-
tion that incumbent elites are constrained by the threat of
insurrection and that when the threat of insurrection comes
from groups located further from the capital the threat is
smaller. They argue and find evidence that isolated capitals
are associated with misgovernance in the case of non-
democracies because the government is less constrained.
Campante (2014) finds that isolated state capitals in the US
are associated with higher levels of corruption, and find
evidence that this relationship is driven by voters paying
less attention to state politics when they live further from
Potter
the state capital. Thus, isolated state capitals are allowed to
operate with less accountability from the public than less
isolated state capitals.
In both of these papers, whether in the US or in a cross-
national setting, the authors argue that isolated capitals are
associated with less accountability because more populated
capital cities are able to exert pressure on the government.
However, in the case of conflict, the relationship is less
clear. This is because, as argued in this paper, increased
responsiveness to the interests of the largest urban area may
in fact decrease the responsiveness of the government to
factions located outside of the largest urban area. In fact,
there may well be a trade-off between accountability and
conflict reduction involved in locating the capital outside of
the major urban area.
This is especially true when we consider that many
civil conflicts occur in isolated areas of the county.
Fearon and Laitin (2003) argue that civil conflict is in
part the result of factions living outside of the govern-
ment’s control; for example, in mountainous terrain.
Their argument is that these factions are able to exist as a
result of states that are unable to control these factions
due to low state capacity and/or rugged terrain that allows
the rival factions to continue to operate. Similarly,
Buhaug (2010) creates a model in which the probability
of conflict in an area increases as distance from the capi-
tal increases because extending state capacity further
from the capital is costly. Empirically, Buhaug and Gates
(2002) find evidence that civil conflicts are more likely to
occur at greater distances from the capital. The argument
here is that while locating the capital in the largest urban
area of the country may increase government accounta-
bility to this large urban population, and therefore
increase overall accountability (as suggested in Campante
et al. (2013) and Campante (2014)), it may also reduce
responsiveness to other geographic areas and therefore
increase the probability of civil conflict.
Empirical relationship between capital
location and civil conflict
The relationship between capital location and civil conflict
is difficult to test empirically for a number of reasons. First,
the number of countries with their capital located outside of
the main urban area is relatively small: 28 countries in the
dataset have their capitals located outside of their largest
city. Second, as discussed above, the most common motiva-
tion for locating the capital outside of the main urban area
is to appease rival cities or geographical factions. It seems
reasonable to expect that countries that locate their capital
outside of the main urban area are more likely to institute
other policies to reduce conflict as well. On the other hand,
countries that locate their capital outside of an urban area
are likely to have a higher initial potential for civil conflict
because otherwise they would not have chosen to take this
3
step. From a theoretical perspective, these biases move in
opposite directions, and it is unclear which one would dom-
inate. However, there is clearly a selection bias in terms of
which countries choose to locate their capital outside of the
largest city. Third, there is inadequate overtime variation to
use a time-series analysis of capital location. Only 11 coun-
tries have shifted their capitals since 1960 (eight of these to
smaller cities).
Because of this, the goal of the analysis is not to establish
a causal relationship, but to establish whether there is a cross-
sectional correlation between locating the capital outside of
the main urban area and a reduction in civil conflict.
For the baseline analysis, the dependent variable for civil
conflict comes from the Major Episodes of Political Violence
(MEPV) dataset (Marshall, 2016). The outcome is either
binary for whether the country has experienced an episode
of violent civil conflict since 1946 or a count of the number
of years between 1946 and 2015 during which there was
violent conflict. Violent conflict is defined as the following:
“Major episodes of political violence are defined by the sys-
tematic and sustained use of lethal violence by organized
groups that result in at least 500 directly-related deaths over
the course of the episode” (Marshall, 2016: 2). Thus, for the
binary variable, countries that have experienced at least one
of these events since 1946 are coded as 1, and 0 otherwise.
For the count variable, the number of years during which
there was conflict are summed.
While the dependent variable includes civil wars and
civil conflicts, the results are the same if only civil con-
flict or only civil wars are used. China is the only coun-
try to have their capital located outside of the main urban
area and to have a civil war in the time period analyzed.
Even in the case of China, one could argue that Shanghai
(which was the largest city in the country at the time)
was not actually part of China as it had been adminis-
tered as an international settlement controlled by the
British, Americans and French for most of the period
prior to the civil war.
The independent variable of interest is binary and coded
as 1 if the capital is outside of the major urban center, and 0
otherwise. Control variables for country area, total popula-
tion, percent of the country that is urban, whether the coun-
try is oil producing (defined as at least one-third of export
revenue from fossil fuels), GDP per capita and the popula-
tion of the largest city come from the World Bank Indicators
dataset (World Bank, 2017). These variables are coded as
their value in 1960 (earliest year of data across countries),
or as the mean of the years from 1960 to 1965 if there is
large variation within this time period. This was in order to
not control for post-treatment variables. However, coding
for current values does not substantively affect the results.
Controls for ethnic fractionalization5 and elevation (which
is adapted from the work of A.J. Gerard at the World Bank)
are also included and come from Fearon and Laitin (2003).
These controls have either been previously associated with
4 Research and Politics 

Table 1. Logit and count models of conflict using MEPV dataset.

Civil conflict Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Logit Count Logit Count

Capital not in major city –2.308* –1.504** –2.583* –1.256**
(0.973) (0.354) (1.302) (0.397)
Area 0.058 0.000 0.000 0.000
(0.207) (0.000) (0.001) (0.000)
Log population 1.148** 0.660** 0.815+ 0.544**
(0.289) (0.120) (0.420) (0.126)
Ethnic fractionalization 1.823 1.142* 2.078 0.912+
(1.310) (0.551) (1.456) (0.549)
Percent urban 0.013 –0.001 0.004 –0.005
(0.018) (0.008) (0.020) (0.008)
Oil producing –1178 –542 –1300 –513
(971) (352) (1152) (360)
Elevation 1.962 0.953 2.357 1.773*
(1.828) (0.731) (2.136) (0.836)
Population of major city 0.004 –0.001 0.230 –0.001
(0.006) (0.001) (0.248) (0.001)
GDPPC –0.185* –0.036 –0.262* –0.020
(0.077) (0.026) (0.133) (0.028)
Constant –17.865** –8.844** –12.953+ –7.123**
(4.854) (1.994) (6.785) (2.129)
Region dummies Yes Yes Yes Yes
N 152 152 121 121
Log-likelihood –51.83 –437.00 –39.73 –367.68
LR χ
2
91.64 90.39 66.10 69.38

GDPPC: Gross domestic product per capita; LR: likelihood ratio.

+p < 0.10.

*p < 0.05.
**p < 0.01.

conflict in existing literature or directly relate to the size of
the capital city (total population, population of largest city
and percent urban). In addition, region fixed effects are
included in all models.
The base model specification is:
Conflicti = F ( β 0 + β1 (Country Controlsi )
+ β 2 (Urban Controlsi ) + β3 (Capital Locationi ) + fi + ei )
where the dependent variable is a dummy for whether a civil
conflict occurred between 1940 and 2008, Country Controls
is a vector of controls at the country level, Urban Controls
is a vector of urban related controls and Capital Location is
a dummy variable for whether the capital is located outside
of the largest urban center, fi is a set of region dummy vari-
ables and ei is the error term. Conflict is either a binary vari-
able (where a logit model is used) or a count variable (where
a negative binomial count model is used).6
Model 1 in Table 1 is a logit model using the binary
measure of conflict and the full sample of countries for
which there is available data. Note that some countries are
excluded from the analysis because of lack of data availa-
bility for the full set of control variables. Model 2 is a count
model with the full sample. Model 3 is a logit model using
a reduced sample of countries that does not include Western
democracies and all countries that changed their capitals
since 1960. These observations are removed because it is
possible that despite the region fixed effects, the results are
still being driven by Western democracies such as the US,
Australia, Canada and Switzerland, which all have their
capitals outside of the primary urban center. There are also
11 countries that shifted their capitals since 1960 and eight
of these countries shifted their capitals to smaller cities.
These 11 countries are also removed. Tables of countries
with their capital outside of the largest city, as well as those
that have shifted their capital since 1960 and those that are
removed from the sample in Model 3 and Model 4, are pro-
vided in the online Appendix. Model 4 uses a count model
and the same reduced sample as in Model 3.
In all models, we see that the coefficient on whether a
capital is located outside of the largest urban center is sig-
nificant at least at the 95% confidence level and in the pre-
dicted direction. Countries that locate their capital outside
Potter 5

Table 2. Logit and count models of conflict using NAVCO dataset.

Civil conflict Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Logit Count Logit Count

Capital not in major city –1.83* –1.37** –1.61 –0.90*
(0.86) (0.31) (1.12) (0.35)
Log population 1.01** 0.60** 0.71+ 0.51**
(0.27) (0.10) (0.38) (0.11)
Area 0.00 –0.00 0.00 –0.00
(0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00)
Ethnic fractionalization 1.35 1.29** 1.48 0.97*
(1.31) (0.47) (1.44) (0.45)
Percent urban 0.01 0.00 –0.00 –0.00
(0.02) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01)
Oil producing –2271** –489 –2474* –550+
(851.43) (323.39) (984.86) (320.10)
Elevation 0.67 –0.05 2.15 0.97
(1.86) (0.70) (2.26) (0.73)
Population of major city –0.00 –0.00 0.12 –0.00
(0.00) (0.00) (0.17) (0.00)
GDPPC –0.12* –0.05* –0.07 –0.04
(0.05) (0.02) (0.06) (0.03)
Constant –12.64** –7.20** –8.99 –6.15**
(4.25) (1.62) (6.13) (1.69)
Region dummies Yes Yes Yes Yes
N 152 152 121 121
Log-likelihood –53.35 –440.01 –43.89 –366.37
LR χ
2
72.49 87.24 38.13 70.99

GDPPC: Gross domestic product per capita; LR: likelihood ratio.

+p < 0.10.

*p < 0.05.
**p < 0.01.

of a major urban area are significantly less likely to have
experienced a civil conflict over the period of analysis.
As a robustness check of the main results, Table 2 uses
the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes
(NAVCO) Dataset (Chenoweth and Lewis, 2013) instead of
the MEPV dataset as the dependent variable. The models
are the same as in Table 1, where Model 1 and 2 include the
full sample with a logit and count model respectively, and
Model 3 and 4 use the reduced sample and logit and count
model respectively. We again see that all results are nega-
tive, as in Table 1. However, in Model 3 (logit model with
Western democracies and countries that shifted their capital
since 1960 removed) the coefficient on Capital Location
does not reach traditional levels of significance (p = 0.150).
In the online Appendix, I use the same model specifications
and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) dataset on
violence and find a negative and significant relationship
between locating the capital outside of the largest city and
violent civil conflict in all models.
The NAVCO dataset contains separate coding for con-
flicts that are violent and conflicts that are non-violent, where
violent conflict is defined as the following: “Campaigns
where a significant amount of violence occurred are charac-
terized as violent. Violent resistance involves the use of force
to physically harm or threaten to harm the opponent” and
“Nonviolent resistance does not directly threaten or harm the
physical well-being of the opponent” (Chenoweth and
Lewis, 2013: 3). The distinction between non-violent and
violent conflict is interesting in that non-violent conflict
tends to be urban. The models in Table 2 considered violent
and non-violent conflict jointly.
Table 3 analyses the measures of violent and non-violent
conflict separately. Model 1 uses a binary variable for having
at least one non-violent conflict during the period of analysis,
and Model 2 uses a binary variable for having at least one
violent conflict during the period of analysis. Note that count
models were not used here, as determining the start and end
date of non-violent conflicts was not the goal of the NAVCO
dataset (the NAVCO dataset instead focuses on peak years of
campaigns as this is generally easier to determine).
The coefficients are negative and significant at least at
the 90% level in both models. This indicates that countries
with their capital outside of their largest city have fewer
instances of violent and non-violent conflict. This suggests
6 Research and Politics 

Table 3. Models of violent and non-violent conflict using the control of the largest urban center over the government,
NAVCO dataset. and increasing the government’s responsiveness to multiple
Model 1 Model 2 factions outside of the largest urban area.
The empirical results of the paper find a correlation
Logit (non-violent) Logit (violent) between locating the capital outside of the major urban
Capital not in major city –1.29* –1.19+ area and a reduction in civil conflict. The results are only
(0.65) (0.65) correlational, and there is likely a selection bias in that
Log population 0.81** 0.36+ countries that chose to locate their capital outside of the
(0.23) (0.20) major urban area may have also made other decisions to
Ethnic fractionalization 0.73 1.47 reduce conflict, or may be more prone to conflict between
(1.03) (1.05) competing factions. For example, many of the countries
Percent urban 0.02 0.00 that have their capital outside of the largest urban area also
(0.01) (0.01) have federalist systems, such as Australia, Canada, Brazil,
Oil producing –2478** 220 Switzerland, Pakistan and the US. While removing the
(786) (688) Western democracies from the analysis should help protect
Elevation –0.03 2.10 against the possibility that these countries are driving the
(1.31) (1.40) results, there is still a basic selection issue in how countries
Population of major city –0.00 –0.00 choose to locate their capital that will need to be addressed
(0.00) (0.00) in future work.
GDPPC –0.03 –0.13* Despite these limitations, the results describe a relation-
(0.04) (0.06) ship that deserves further attention. Future work will need
Area 0.10 0.02 to use a more qualitative approach, or focus on an identifi-
(0.14) (0.11) cation strategy such as an instrumental variable approach to
Constant –13.20** –4.99 better understand the causal chain between capital location
(3.82) (3.40)
and civil conflict.
Region dummies Yes Yes
N 152 152
Log-likelihood –78.54 –75.04 Declaration of conflicting interests
LR χ
2
52.67 60.22 The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
GDPPC: Gross domestic product per capita; LR: likelihood ratio. article.
+p < 0.10.

*p < 0.05.
**p < 0.01.
that the association between capital location and conflict is
not limited to violent or non-violent conflict, which is
important as previous research has found that non-violent
conflict is more likely in urban areas (Chenoweth and
Stephan, 2011). Had the results only held for non-violent
conflicts, then this may have indicated that the reduction of
conflict is occurring through a different mechanism
whereby large urban populations are less likely to engage in
conflict when they are outside the capital city because they
have a lower probability of success. The fact that the result
holds for both violent and non-violent conflict indicates
that this alternative mechanism is not driving the results.
Conclusion
This paper examines the relationship between capital loca-
tion and civil conflict. The subject is one that has received
limited attention in the political science literature, despite
being an important political issue in countries around the
world. The paper argues that locating the capital outside of
the largest urban area may reduce civil conflict by decreasing
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Supplementary materials
The supplementary files are available at http://journals.sagepub.
com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2053168017734077.
Notes
1. The authors also discuss how Canada rotated their capital
between the major urban centers before eventually establish-
ing the capital outside of any major urban center (in Ottawa)
– they describe this as a “striking consociational feature.”
2. Empirically, Ades and Glaeser (1995) examine a number of
empirical relationships between the percentage of a nation’s
population living in the urban center and political outcomes
such as democratic institutions. They find that dictatorships
have urban centers that are, on average, 50% larger (measured
as a percentage of total population) than democratic nations.
The authors tentatively find evidence that dictators cause an
increase in the size of urban agglomerations. This work looks
at large urban centers, and not at whether the capital is located
within these centers. Furthermore, this work does not examine
what the effect of this might be on civil conflict.
Potter
3. Some reports have even suggested that the move may have
been primarily motivated by the advice of sages whom some
in the military junta leading Myanmar at the time were
extremely attentive to (Myoe, 2006).
4. The Kazakhstan government claims to have moved the capi-
tal in order to protect the government from natural disasters
(Schatz, 2004).
5. Ethnic fractionalization control is the ethno-linguistic frac-
tionalization (ELF) index. Using the measure from Fearon
(2003) does not affect the results.
6. All results hold if a Poisson model is used for the count vari-
able models. However, a negative binomial is likely the cor-
rect model due to the large number of countries with zero
conflicts in the time period.
Carnegie Corporation of New York Grant
This publication was made possible (in part) by a grant from
Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and
views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.
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