THE COMING OF URBAN PRIMACY IN LATIN AMERICA*

 

Christopher Chase-Dunn

Department of Sociology

Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, Maryland 21218

U.S.A.

 

*Thanks to Carin Celebuski for help with the analysis and interpretation. This is a version of a longer paper, "Latin American Cities in the World-system," originally prepared for the Seminar on "Structural development and social problems of the Latin American city" of the Working Group on Latin American Urbanization, Tepotzlan, August 22-24, 1982. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (SES 7825071). Published in Comparative Urban Research XI, 1-2:14-31, 1985 and as "El fenomeno de primacia de una ciudad an los sistemas urbanos latinoamericanos: su surgimiento," Pp. 27-46 in J. E. Hardoy and A. Portes (eds.) Ciudades y Sistemas Urbanos: Economia Informal y Desorden Espacial. Buenos Aires: CLACSO 1985.

 

 

Scholars of Latin American urbanization have long noted the high degree

of concentration in national city systems. Explanations of this

characteristic of Latin American societies are many and various, and the

comparative studies which have been made do not allow for firm conclusions

as to the causes of urban primacy in Latin America. This study assembles

new data to investigate Latin American urban primacy over the period from

1800 to 1975. It is the first such study to systematically compare long run

patterns of urbanization in Latin America with the urban histories of more

"developed" national societies, those which can be said to constitute the

core areas of the modern world-system in the twentieth century.

 

Urban primacy

The empirical distribution of city populations in a territory is a

characteristic of any human society which contains cities, towns and villages.

The causality of the spatial distribution of population is highly complex

and the logic of spatial arrangements differs across different kinds of

social systems. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of population is

itself only a formal and superficial characteristic which does not

systematically reflect determinant social relations (Smith, 1982). The

same may be said, however, for many other surface-level phenomena which

social scientists study in order to infer the logic of social systems. This

realization encourages us to search for better measures of the social

relations which we think are more fundamentally involved in system dynamics.

That search, however, should not preclude us from analyzing those less-than-

ideal types of data which are available, as long as these investigations pay

adequate attention to the problems in inference involved.

 

Ideally a city-size distribution should always be studied together

with data on the economic transactions and political dominance relations

among cities. In practice we can obtain population data much more readily

than we can find data on commodity flows or power relations. The choice is

whether or not to present an analysis which infers structural relations

from an admittedly problematic indicator. The report below is such an

analysis and it should only be presented as preliminary. Further data-

gathering and analysis are a prerequisite to firm conclusions. 1

 

Theories of urban primacy

General theories which seek to explain variation in the steepness or

flatness of city size hierarchies can be categorized as economic and

political. Following Christaller (1967), social geographers have argued

that an integrated space economy will produce a locational distribution of

activities such that those which can be efficiently produced in a centralized

way (because storage and transport costs are cheap) will be located together

in a central city, whereas those which have high transport and storage costs

will be more dispersed over territory. This theory ignores purely

geographic factors which alter the spatial plane such as rivers, mountain

ranges, bodies of water, (which alter transport costs) and resources whose

locations are determined by “nature” such as mineral deposits and land

suitable for agriculture. Ignoring natural inputs and geographical

irregularities, an integrated space economy will produce a distribution of

population similar to the lognormal rank-size rule. In a lognormal rank-

size distribution the largest city is twice as large as the second largest,

three times larger than the third largest, and so on. Some geographers

argue that such a space economy only operates in a competitive market

system in which the priceSof commodities reflect their costs of production,

but archaeological evidence shows that city systems vary around the log-

normal rule even in societies in which price-setting markets do not playa

dominant role in social exchange (Kowalewski, 1982). Transport costs and

storage costs affect the economy of non-market systems, although through

different means, and less directly than in market systems.

 

Another theory of variation in the steepness of city-size hierarchies

emphasizes the distribution of political-military power in space. Centrally

organized political empires are thought to create more hierarchical city

systems than networks of independent city-states or nation-states because

concentrated political-military power allows for the concentration of wealth,

and therefore of population. Of course the distribution of power is not

always organized territorially, so there is considerable looseness of fit

between power concentration and spatial hierarchies. Nevertheless,

variation in ancient city-size distributions does correspond with the rise J

and fall of political empires.

 

The literature on Latin American city systems combines these two

general theoretical approaches with more historically specific interpretations

of the development of Latin American societies. Some variations of

dependency theory, especially that explicated by Frank (1969) can be read to

suggest that peripheral areas in the world-economy will develop primate

city systems because the largest cities will act as funnels which channel

peripheral raw materials produced in the hinterland to core nations.

Middle-size cities producing manufactured goods will not emerge because

they will be unable to compete with the cheaper manufactured goods from the

core countries.

 

More particular elaborations of this proposition are many and varied.

It has been claimed that urban primacy in Latin America developed from the

political power which Spanish colonial municipalities exercised over their

hinterlands (Cardoso, 1975; Portes and Walton, 1976). It has also been

claimed that the development of large scale export agriculture explains the

rise of Latin American urban primacy (McGreevey, 1972; Roberts, 1979).

Carol Smith (1980) has argued that the development of a free labor market in

the largest cities, in combination with “mercantile capitalist” class power

in secondary cities (which restricts access to employment), results in primacy

because migrants from rural areas concentrate in the largest cities.

Hardoy and Langdon (1978) interpret their findings as indicating that

primacy results from international immigration into the largest cities in

combination with a socially produced scarcity of available rural land for

settlement. Immigrants are then forced to congregate in the largest cities.

Before discussing the merits of these explanations let us consider the

methods and evidence to be examined in this research report.

 

The data

My research project has gathered data on the population sizes of the

ten largest cities in each of 131 countries at decennial time points between

1800 and 1975. Most earlier cross-national studies of urban primacy have

studied much shorter and more recent time periods. The slow rate of change

of urban systems means that variation over short time periods reflects

mostly measurement error.

 

Two studies of Latin American cities have analyzed data in both the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The pioneering study by McGreevey

(1971) focussed on eight Latin American countries over the period from 1750

to 1960. A more recent study by Hardoy and Langdon (1978) examines twenty

Latin American countries between 1850 and 1930. The data analyzed here is

more complete in the sense that it contains more cities at more points in

time than the previous studies, and it compares Latin American cities to

those in the "developed” countries of the world-system. The Latin American

countries studied here are: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador,

Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia,

Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba and the Dominican

Republic.

 

Sources of the city populations of the ten largest cities in each of

these nineteen Latin American countries are chiefly the population censuses

of each country, but additional sources of population estimates such as

gazetteers were used when census data were not available. Thus we have enough

data to calculate a primacy index (at least four cities) for thirteen of the

countries by 1820. By 1900 we have data for all countries except Panama,

which enters our data set in 1910. Our raw data on individual cities is

interpolated to decennial time points by a computer program which uses

three or four data points, and which adjusts for a change from municipal

boundary to urban agglomeration figures. Table 1 shows the interpolated data

for Argentina in the years 1800, 1810 and 1820. Notice that a population

for Cordoba cannot be estimated for 1800, and since it is probably the

second or third largest city this could have a major affect on the calculated

measures of urban primacy. Missing data is less of a problem as we move

forward in time. The city populations marked by an asterisk have been

estimated by the interpolation program.

 

Methods and measurements

The larger project, from which this paper is a preliminary report, seeks

to test propositions about the causes of national urban primacy by

comparing changes in countries over time (see Chase-Dunn, 1981). A multivariate

 model of the causes of national urban primacy will eventually be

tested employing economic, political-military and demographic variable

characteristics of nations, international transactions, and changing

features of the world-system as a whole. At this point however, only the

data on the populations of cities is ready to be explored, and thus the

following will report patterns observed in variation on the main dependent

variable, national urban primacy. I shall attempt to interpret these

patterns in the light of theoretical arguments and historical studies of

Latin American urbanization in the existing social science literature.

 

Several indicators of the concentration of populations in space have

been used by other researchers. Davis (1969) uses a ratio of the population

of the largest city to the sum of the next three cities. Hardoy and Langdon

(1978) use the Davis measure plus the ratio of the largest city to the total

population of the nation. McGreevey (1971) develops an indicator which

measures the degree to which a distribution of city populations differs from

the lognormal rule. The lognormal rule is used here simply as a yardstick

for comparison. A city size distribution is lognormal (a straight line when

plotted on double log paper) when the second largest city is half the size

of the largest, the third largest is one third the size of the largest, and

so on. A primate city system is one in which the secondary cities are

smaller than would be predicted by the lognormal rule, and on the other hand,

a flat or unhierarchical city system is one in which the secondary cities

are larger than expected according to the lognormal rule.

McGreevey's measure has several advantages over earlier ones. It

allows for the comparison of distributions with different numbers of cities

by correcting for the number of cities considered.

 

Pamela Walters (1985) has developed an indicator of primacy

which is based on McGreevey's, but with some improvements. It is called the

Standardized Primacy Index (SPI). This indicator takes the value of zero (0)

when a distribution is lognormal. It takes on positive values when a

distribution is primate or steeper than lognormal, and negative values when

a distribution is flatter than lognormal. McGreevey's indicator is not

signed, and thus deviations either above or below the lognormal line are

computed implicitly as indicating greater primacy. Walters' measure is

assigned a sign (i.e. positive or negative) based on the sum of the

deviations from the lognormal rule.2 Table 1 shows the observed city

populations, the populations expected by the lognormal rule, and the

deviations for the case of Argentina in 1800, 1810 and 1820. The main

summary statistic analyzed in this research report is shown as the SP12,

which is a Standardized Primacy Index calculated on all the cities for which

data are available at a particular time point.

 

Findings

This research project has plotted the decennial SPIs for the nineteen

Latin American countries under study, and also those of seventeen countries

now considered to be in the core of the modern world-system. First let us

examine the results for the Latin American countries.

Figure 1 shows the SPI of Argentina plotted from 1800 to 1975. When

we focus on a single country, such as earlier studies have done, we can try

to interpret changes in the city-size distribution by noting the causes

of divergent rates of growth of the cities. Vapnarsky's (1975) study of

Argentina concluded that the development of “external orientation,” the

growth of export agriculture, had caused the Argentine city system to

become more primate since the early nineteenth century. Hardoy and Langdon

(1978) pay more attention to the timing of increased primacy, noting that

European immigration concentrating in Buenos Aires accounts for the rise in

primacy in the last half of the nineteenth century.

 

The focus on single countries and the relative growth of particular

cities is a fascinating undertaking. Attempting an historical account

which explains the varying fortunes of cities involves immersion in the

richness of political and economic history of each country. Brief but

insightful accounts of this kind are given for eight Latin American

countries in the volume edited by Morse (1971). Arregui (1981) has under-

taken an investigation of the linkages between the development of Peru's

city system and its connections with the larger world-system. Now, however,

let us examine the patterns revealed by looking at all nineteen Latin

American countries. We shall use the telescope rather than the magnifying

glass.

Table 2 shows how the SPIs of the Latin American countries changed

between 1800 and 1975. Over the whole period for the time points 1800, 1850,

1900, 1950 and 1975 the mean SPI was 3.4, the standard deviation was 8.3

and the SPI varied from a maximum of 16.3 to a minimum of -23.6. Remember

that this SPI is computed on the ten largest cities in each country

(although earlier time points may not have data on all cities --an SPI is

not computed if there are less than four) and a score of zero means that a

city size distribution is lognormal. The mean SPI of 3.4 indicates that

Latin American countries do tend to have primate or steep city size

distributions.

 

McGreevey's (1971) earlier study of eight Latin American countries

concluded that, though the time of the shift toward primacy varied, all

Latin American countries, with the exception of Colombia, have become primate

by 1950. Table 2 confirms his finding when additional countries are included.

Four countries (Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador (1820) and Colombia) were primate

already in 1800. While there is some moving down toward lognormality, or

even flatness on the part of some countries, the overall trend is for all

countries to move up, but at different periods. Table 2 shows that the

main period in which the average level of the SPI shifts toward primacy is

between 1900 and 1950. In 1800, 1850 and 1900 the average SPI is very close

to lognormal for the Latin American countries. Between 1900 the mean SPI

jumps from -.2 to 7.7, and in 1975 it goes even higher to 8.9.

Let us look more closely at the period between 1900 and 1970. Table 3

shows the decennial means and standard deviations of the SPIs for the nine-

teen Latin American countries, and it also shows the ten year differences

in the means, as well as indicating the statistical significance of the ten

year differences from zero. Table 3 shows that the mean SPI has risen in

every decade of the twentieth century, and the standard deviations have

decreased, indicating a convergence. The biggest shifts occurred in the

decades of the twenties, the thirties and the forties, with the change

occurring during the forties attaining statistical significance in its

differing from zero.3

 

 

The city systems of core countries

 

The specification and testing of a causal model of urban primacy is

beyond the scope of this present exercise. This would require the measurement

of variables thought to account for primacy over the period being studied.

Such model testing is the long run goal of our research project, but for now

we may simply compare Latin American city systems with those found in

countries now occupying core positions in the larger world-economy.

Table 4 shows the distribution of SPIs for seventeen countries which

were in the core by 1930.4 As with Table 2 (Latin American countries) the

times covered are 1800, 1850, 1900, 1950 and 1975. The first striking thing

to note in comparing Tables 2 and 4 is that the core countries do not

shift toward primacy over time. The mean SPI is generally close to log-

normal. only for 1950 does it climb higher than 2, and by 1975 five of the

seventeen core countries have very flat city size distributions. Recall

that none of the Latin American countries are flat, and only Colombia is

near lognormal in 1975.

 

Table 5 shows the periods in which change occurred within the city

systems of the core. The right side of the table shows those countries who

shift SPI categories between the years designated. It can be seen that the

biggest concentrations of changes are of two kinds. In the period between

1850 and 1900 six countries shifted toward steeper city size distributions,

and of these all but France had yet to enter the core of the world-system.

From 1900 to 1950 five countries moved toward less hierarchical city

systems: the USA, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The U.K., Netherlands and Belgium are old core countries. The U.S. entered

the core in the 1870s or 1880s and began the rapid flattening of its city

system in 1930, while Canada (which entered the core in the 1920s) moved

toward a flatter distribution after 1910, and again after 1940.

 

As with the Latin American countries, the core countries deserve

individual attention to the timing and extent of changes in their city

systems, but here we want to focus on the broad outlines of core patterns

in order to compare them with Latin America.

Comparing core and Latin American city systems

When we compare Tables 2 and 4 we can observe that the core mean SPI

for all time points is .7 while the Latin American mean for all time points

is more primate, 3.4. A test for the statistical significance of the

difference between these two means is significant at the .04 level. This

may be interpreted as weak evidence in support of the hypothesis that

position in the world-economy is related to urban primacy.

However, when we look at the patterns over time and compare core and

Latin American means at different time points a more refined picture emerges.

Between 1900 and 1950 both core and Latin American SPI means rise, but the

increase is very small for the core and very large for Latin America. And

between 1950 and 1975 the mean SPI for core countries decreases, indicating

the flattening of city size distributions, while the mean for Latin American

countries continues to rise substantially. Statistical tests for the

difference between core and Latin American SPI means do not reach

significance for 1800, 1850 or 1900. But for 1950 the difference is

significant at the .003 level and for 1975 at the .0002 level.

Thus these comparisons show that the divergence in urban primacy

between the core and periphery emerges in the twentieth century, between

1900 and 1950, and continues to increase until 1975. Since the overall

core distribution does not change much, except for a small trend toward

flattening in the 1950-75 period, we may conclude that most of the change

is due to the growth of primacy in the 1920s, 30s and especially the 1940s

in Latin America.

 

From comparing Tables 2 and 4 it may be suggested that SPls are more

stable in core countries than in Latin America. When we compare changes

over time in Latin America and the core, and test the hypothesis that there

is no difference between these changes, no significant differences are found

for the 1800-1850, and the 1850-1900 periods. However, for the 1900 to 1950

period, the core SPI changes .9 while the Latin American SPI changes 7.9

points, and this difference is statistically significant at the .01 level.

 

From 1950 to 1975 the core declines -1.9 points while the Latin American

countries increase 1.2 points, and this difference is significant at the

-.01 level. Note that from 1900 to 1950 the core changes much less than

Latin America, supporting the hypothesis of core stability. But from 1950

to 1975 the core changes more than Latin America and the changes occur in

opposite directions. Latin American countries continue to become more

primate, while the core countries are, on the average, moving toward less

hierarchical city systems.

 

Discussion and conclusions

We have found patterns in the above one-variable analysis which indicate

that indeed there are differences between Latin American and core country

city-size distributions. In both the core and in Latin America we can find

primate and flat city-size distributions, and in both zones of the world-

economy we can find instances where a country moves toward greater primacy

or greater flatness. Statistically significant differences in the city-size

distributions do not emerge until the twentieth century, and are largely due

to the major shift toward primacy which occurs in Latin America in the

1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

 

                The relationship between position in the world economy and urban primacy

is not a simple one. While all Latin American countries except Colombia

are primate by 1950, all core countries are not lognormal or flat. Indeed,

in 1975 ten of the seventeen core countries may be described as primate.

two as lognormal, and five as flat. Trends, however, show that while Latin

American city systems continue to increase their levels of primacy, all of

the core countries, with the exception of Belgium, are either stable or

becoming increasingly less hierarchical in the 1950-1975 period.

 

How ought different theories of the causes of urban primacy account

for the patterns found? Generally we may classify theoretical approaches

to city-size distributions as those which focus on the distribution of

institutionalized power over space, and those which focus on the economically

efficient location of production and services in space. Some have claimed

that Latin American countries exhibit greater degrees of primacy because of

the heritage of colonial institutions which located political power in the

administrative cities which functioned as extractors of surplus from the

countryside. Cardoso (1975) makes an argument of this sort in his

discussion of Latin American urban politics.

 

While such arguments may be useful in explaining other institutional

differences between core and Latin American societies, they do not help

explain the city-size patterns we find. Latin American city systems only

became significantly more primate than those in the core in the twentieth

century. It is possible, however, that another version of the political

power approach is more compatible with the results. Frank (1979) has argued

that peripheral countries engage in more autocentric development during

periods when core-periphery trade is reduced or when core countries are

fighting among themselves. More autonomous state formation in the periphery

is often accompanied by import-substitution which locates new industries in

urban areas. When this is further encouraged by national states much of

the new investment is located in the already largest and most politically

central cities, thus increasing urban primacy, although other authors

(Arregui, 1981) have argued just the opposite: that such periods will see

a trend toward the growth of middle-size cities specialized in manufacturing.

 

The 1930s and 1940s saw the biggest increases in Latin American primacy.

In the 1930s core-periphery trade was reduced as the world-economy stagnated.

Prices of traditional peripheral exports plumetted, and Latin American

countries were not able to buy manufactured goods from core countries. The

rise of populist governments in several Latin American countries encouraged

a more self-reliant approach to development in this period and import

substitution was encouraged by state policies (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979).

In the 1940s the demand for peripheral raw materials returned as a result of

the war needs of core states, but manufactured goods from the core were still

in short supply due to the war. Further investment in manufacturing and

heavy industry occurred in many countries, and this tended to be located in

the already large cities.

 

Industrialization and the growth of more capital intensive production

does not necessarily cause urban primacy. In Britain the industrial

revolution and attendant production for the world market led to a reduction

in the level of British primacy between 1801 and 1851 as Liverpool,

Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow grew more rapidly than London. The

industrialization which occurred in the United States in the nineteenth

century did not much flatten the already lognormal city-size distribution,

but neither did it cause primacy.

 

Does industrialization result in primacy in Latin American but not in

core countries, and if this is so what accounts for it? First let us look

at Latin American countries to see if the early industrializers increase

primacy before the later industrializers. A more sophisticated test of this

hypothesis will be possible when we have time series on the economic

development and international trade of Latin American countries, but for now

let us make a rough overview. In Brazil , Mexico, Argentina and Chile, import

substitution industrialization begins earlier than in other Latin American

countries. Three of these countries become more primate during the period

of import substitution. Mexico and Chile slowly increase their levels of

primacy from 1900 to 1975. Brazil moves toward two-city primacy in the

1940s but the steepness of its overall city size distribution declines

somewhat after 1950. Argentina does not conform at all to the hypothesis

that import substitution industrialization causes increased primacy.

Argentina is very primate during the whole twentieth century, with primacy

declining slightly between 1910 and 1930 (see Figure 1 above).

 

The Dominican Republic, Bolivia and Paraguay have sharp increases

toward primacy between 1900 and 1910. Between 1910 and 1920 Honduras,

Panama and again the Dominican Republic increase primacy. In the twenties,

El Salvador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru and Panama have sharp increases, and

in the thirties El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Nicaragua

do the same. These shifts do not support the hypothesis that import

substitution industrialization is a major cause of increased primacy. These

countries experienced only minor shifts toward import substitution during

the earlier decades of this century. Neither do these facts support the

hypothesis of El-Shakhs (1972) that primacy increases with middle levels

of economic development.

 

Again, more rigorous analysis of the city-size data in combination with

measures of other variables is required. But at this point it seems unlikely

that the shift toward import substitution industrialization and later export

industrialization (Gereffi and Evans, 1981) can explain much about increases

in primacy. The striking thing is that almost all Latin American countries

increase their levels of primacy in the twentieth century and so we may

suspect that contextual world-system properties which affect all countries

over this period may be responsible. Secular changes in the core-periphery

division of labor do not affect all countries equally however, and in order

to test this kind of proposition we must be much more specific about the

kinds of institutional change that is meant.

 

Comparison of Latin America with other peripheral areas will shed more

light on the possible explanations for increasing urban primacy, although

this is beyond the purview of this paper. It may be that certain kinds of

foreign investment increase primacy, or that the emergence of increasing

ties among peripheral countries accounts for the relatively rapid growth

of the largest cities. Students of the system of world cities have noted

that a certain standardization has occurred such that every “international"

city must have certain amenities (an airport, banks, hotels, etc.). Thus

mere participation in the world-economy requires smaller and less developed

countries to have at least one large city. This requirement will have little

effect on the more integrated and elaborated city systems of the core, but

in small peripheral countries it may account for increased primacy.

 

Endnotes

1. This is a preliminary report from a project which is studying the

evolution of the world city system and national city systems from 1800 to

1980. The major hypothesis being examined is that a nation-states' location

and trajectory in the larger world-system is an important determinant of

features of its city system. In order to complete this project additional

data must be gathered on the location of national societies in the world-

economy and interstate system.

 

2. A confusing situation may arise with the SPI when both positive and

negative deviations appear in the distribution, that is, when some cities

are smaller and others are larger than expected according to the lognormal

rule. This occurs in the situation of what is called "two-city primacy,"

when a country has two very large cities and no middle-size cities. Thus

the second city is larger than expected and the others are smaller. The

sign of the SPI is determined by the sum of these deviations and thus small

changes in the relative size of cities can cause a large SPI to radically

change its sign if the sum of the positive and negative deviations is around

zero. In situations of this kind (two-city primacy) the SPI is an unreliable

indicator of the overall steepness or flatness of a city size hierarchy (a

situation we call "sign-flip") and thus we calculate other measures. One

is the least squares slope of the overall distribution, which is set equal

to -1 when the distribution is lognormal and thus varies around -1 (see

Table 1). The other we label the SPI 3, an SPI index calculated ignoring

the largest city. In the analysis contained in this paper, situations of

two-city primacy have been handled by utilizing the SPI 3. This tells us

the :steepness or flatness of the overall distribution of city sizes ignoring

the deviation due to the existence of two similarly large cities.

We also calculate a "three city SPI” which is based solely on the three

largest cities. This allows us to focus on the relations among the largest

cities, excluding complications due to the addition of the rest of the

distribution. The combined use of these available indicators is made

necessary by the inability of any single statistic to capture all the

information available in a complex distribution.

 

3. Another way of studying change in SPIs is to test the hypothesis that

two sample means are really the same. The null hypothesis is that the

means are really drawn from the same population and that sampling error alone

could account for an apparent difference. When we perform such a comparison

of means for the decades between 1900 and 1970, the years when Latin American

SPIs were changing the most, none of the decade means are different from one

another at a statistically significant level (less than .05). Indeed only

two twenty year periods exhibit statistically significant differences between

means (1930-50 and 1940-60) and these both contain the decade of World War

II when SPI change was greatest. When we consider 30 year lags we begin to

more frequently find mean differences which are statistically significant.

Although the sample is small, this confirms earlier concerns that studying

changes in primacy over short periods reveals mainly measurement error, and

thus the slow rate of change of national city systems requires a research

design with longer time lags (Chase-Dunn, 1982).

 

4. Of these seventeen core countries, five (United Kingdom, France,

Netherlands, Belgium and Austria) were already in the core in 1800. Four

entered the core in the nineteenth century (United States, Italy, Germany, and

Switzerland), and eight entered the core in the twentieth century (Japan,

Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Australia, Canada and the Soviet Union).

 

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