Who Shapes Air Pollution Governance? How Economic Development, Democracy, and Data Condition Stakeholder Influence in Six Majority World Cities

Air pollution is a major global health hazard, with the worst burden falling on cities in the Majority World. Yet which conditions shape governments' willingness to act on air pollution remains poorly understood. Drawing on 63 semi-structured interviews with 72 air pollution experts and stakeholders in six highly polluted cities (Accra, Kampala, Johannesburg, Jakarta, Dhaka, Delhi), we examine how economic development, democracy, and data availability structure the influence of citizens, local advocates, economic elites, and country-external agencies on governments' mitigation efforts. We find that governments remain primarily responsive to economic elites across levels of economic development, while external actors play a stronger role in the lowest-income case, Dhaka. Democracy strengthens citizens and local advocates through electoral accountability and civil society mobilization. Data availability creates opportunities for influence but also provokes governmental counter-strategies. These findings highlight the centrality of stakeholder power in clean-air governance, showing how political, economic, and informational constraints shape whose demands governments respond to.