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Abstract
AbstractRelatively little research has explored whether there is a systemic urban-rural divide in the political and socioeconomic attitudes of citizens across Europe. Drawing on individual-level data from the European Social Survey, we argue that there are strong and significant differences between the populations in these different settings, especially across western European countries. We suggest that this divide is a continuum, running on a gradient from inner cities to suburbs, towns and the countryside. The differences are explained by both composition and contextual effects, and underscore how a firmer appreciation of the urban-rural divide is integral to future place-based policy responses.
Highlights
While social scientists for much of the 20th century tended to assume that political cleavages in western democracies revolved around differences in class position and attitudes towards distributional questions and the role of the state, in recent decades there has been a growing emphasis on those associated with various kinds of group identity and, latterly, with the importance of place (Kenny, 2014; Kriesi, 2010)
We show how, compared to dwellers in inner urban cores, respondents living in suburbs, towns and rural areas are more likely to be conservative in their orientation, dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy in their country, and less likely to trust the political system, even though they are strikingly more likely to participate in it, especially by voting – a finding which has an important bearing on current debates about the future of democratic politics (Runciman, 2018)
In relation to current debates about the underpinnings and scope of political disenchantment, our findings suggest the importance of a place-sensitive conception of this phenomenon, and simultaneously serve to undermine overly generalised characterisations of ‘rural consciousness’ or ‘left-behind’ disillusion (Cramer, 2016; Harris & Charlton, 2016)
Summary
While social scientists for much of the 20th century tended to assume that political cleavages in western democracies revolved around differences in class position and attitudes towards distributional questions and the role of the state, in recent decades there has been a growing emphasis on those associated with various kinds of group identity and, latterly, with the importance of place (Kenny, 2014; Kriesi, 2010). This divergence is not best seen in binary terms, and is better understood as a gradient running from inner cities to metropolitan suburbs, towns and the countryside (as anticipated by Scala and Johnson, 2017 in the US context). We show how, compared to dwellers in inner urban cores, respondents living in suburbs, towns and rural areas are more likely to be conservative in their orientation, dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy in their country, and less likely to trust the political system, even though they are strikingly more likely to participate in it, especially by voting – a finding which has an important bearing on current debates about the future of democratic politics (Runciman, 2018). We show that these differences, which are strong across western European countries, are explained by both compositional and contextual effects
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