The impacts of urban vs. rural location present their own conundrums. Resource-based analyses would anticipate that urbanites are generally more educated and wealthier and have better access to infrastructure, and are thus more likely to become engaged citizens. Moreover, modernisation theory would predict that those who uproot and migrate to urban areas are “agents of change” who are likely to be among the most politically active (Bratton et al., 2005). But the evidence does not always support this expectation (Isaksson, 2014).
In many cases we find that rural inhabitants are much more active than urbanites (Figure 23). The largest differences are in more rural-centric forms of engagement, such as contacting traditional leaders (rural +21 points) and attending community meetings (+23 points).
But the differences persist across several other forms of engagement, including voting (+8 points), political party affiliation (+10 points), contacting local government councillors (+7 points), and joining with others to raise an issue (+8 points). And there is no significant difference between rural and urban inhabitants with respect to the propensity to discuss politics, to contact MPs and party officials, or even, most surprisingly, to participate in protests, which is typically seen – at least in the news media – as a predominantly urban mode of engagement.
城乡地区的影响带来了自身的难题。基于资源的分析会预期，城市居民通常受教育程度更高，更富有，更容易获得基础设施，因此更有可能成为参与公民。此外，现代化理论会预测，那些背井离乡迁移到城市地区的人是“变革的推动者”，他们最有可能成为政治上最活跃的人群之一（Bratton et al., 2005）。但证据并非总是支持这一预期（Isaksson, 2014）。
在许多情况下，我们发现农村居民比城市居民活跃得多（图23）。最大的差异体现在更以农村为中心的参与形式上，例如联系传统领导人（农村+21个百分点）和参加社区会议（+23个百分点）。
但这种差异在其他几种参与形式中依然存在，包括投票（+8个百分点）、政党归属（+10个百分点）、联系地方政府议员（+7个百分点）以及与他人一起提出问题（+8个百分点）。在讨论政治、联系议会议员和政党官员，甚至最令人惊讶的是，参与抗议方面，城乡居民之间没有显著差异，而抗议通常被视为——至少在新闻媒体中——一种主要发生在城市的参与模式。
