Urban bias: Of consequences, classes and causality
批判了用选择理论解释发展中国家城市偏向的流行做法，主张采用阶级理论（而非仅马克思主义）来理解城乡偏向的持续与变化，并分析了阶级联盟与权力平衡如何影响政策结果。
Choice‐theoretic accounts of urban bias (UB) in LDCs are popular, because they also ‘explain’ rural bias in richer countries. Such misguided elegance notwithstanding, class‐theoretic (not simply Marxist/productionist) accounts are preferable. Why? (1) UB alleges persistently inefficient and/or unfair (i) anti‐rural outcomes, (ii) intra‐rurally, biases towards rural elites who in return deliver surpluses townwards. (2) If UB declines for one outcome, it must increase for others ‐ unless pro‐urban classes weaken relative to pro‐rural. Thus farm‐price UB fell in 1975–90 in many LDCs, but ‐ with urban‐rural class/ power balances little changed ‐ public‐expenditure UB rose to compensate. (3) Yet long‐term development transforms such balances, shifting many outcomes from UB to rural bias. (4) Explaining (2) and (3) involves understanding urban‐rural class relations. When, and to obtain which, outcomes, do rural elites seek rural rather than urban alliances? Choice/game/coalition theories help, but only within institutionally dense, localised, historical analyses of why classes cohere or disintegrate.