Urban political overrepresentation and access to public funding for municipalities in the Netherlands

Abstract

Advantageous positions for politically overrepresented groups and rural political discontent are widely debated in academia. However, the role urban political overrepresentation may have in benefiting urban citizens and as an explanation for rural political discontent has hitherto received little attention. This paper addresses urban overrepresentation within national politics and suggests how this, in turn, engenders favorable policies for extremely urbanized municipalities. The paper refers to the Dutch context to illustrate how urban political overrepresentation operates, the access that municipalities with different degrees of urbanization have to public funding, and how they profit from the region deals between 2017 and 2020. The most urbanized municipalities in the Netherlands are found to be politically overrepresented at the national level and have relatively good access to public funding. This is likely to produce benefits for these municipalities and their inhabitants. This paper discusses how these benefits may be an explanation for political discontent in other municipalities.