Abstract
With the recent rise of populism in the developed world, the division between large cities and rural areas is in the spotlight as never before. This article explores the effect of the urban–rural divide on satisfaction with democracy in 27 European countries. I argue that individuals living in rural areas are less satisfied with the way democracy works, in particular, in those countries more affected by rural depopulation. Using data from approximately 35,000 respondents to the European Social Survey, I demonstrate that there is a “geography of discontent” when accounting for citizen satisfaction with democracy. Specifically, I find that individuals living in rural areas show lower levels of satisfaction than do those in urban areas. Moreover, there is an interaction between the geographical distribution of population and the area where a person lives. Individuals in rural areas tend to be less satisfied with democracy when the country exhibits a higher degree of urbanization. The hypotheses are examined through single-country linear regressions and multilevel models.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The results are qualitatively the same if the dummy variable in which rural residents are coded 1 and all other respondents are coded 0 is replaced with a categorical variable distinguishing residents in ‘big cities.’ ‘suburbs or outskirts,’ ‘towns or small cities,’ and ‘rural arenas.’
In Austria, the percentage of population living in rural areas is 41.1%; in Bulgaria, 25.0%: in Latvia, 31.9%; in Montenegro, 33.2%; and in Poland, 39.9%.
The results are qualitatively the same when using the ratio between the % Population living in rural areas in 2018 and in 2010.
The wording of the question is as follows: “How much would you say that decisions in [country] politics are transparent, meaning that everyone can see how they were made?”.
References
Anderson, C.J., and C.A. Guillory. 1997. Political institutions and satisfaction with democracy: A cross-national analysis of consensus and majoritarian systems. American Political Science Review 91: 66–81.
Beynon, M.J., A. Crawley, and M. Munday. 2016. Measuring and understanding the differences between urban and rural areas. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 43 (6): 1136–1154.
Bland, G., D. Brinkerhoff, D. Romero, and A. Wetterberg. 2021. Public services, geography, and citens perceptions of government in Latin American. Political Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09691-0.
Brinkerhoff, D.W., A. Wetterberg, and E. Wibbels. 2018. Distance, services. And citizens perceptions of the state in rural Africa. Governance 31: 103–124.
Bormann, N.-C., and M. Golder. 2013. Democratic electoral systems around the world, 1946–2011. Electoral Studies 32: 360–369.
Cramer Walsh, K. 2012. Putting inequality in its place: Rural consciousness and the power of perspective. American Political Science Review 106 (3): 517–532.
Eurostat. 2018. Eurostat regional yearbook, 2018th ed. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Ezrow, L., and G. Xezonakis. 2016. Satisfaction with democracy and turnout: A temporal perspective. Party Politics 22 (1): 3–14.
Flavin, P., and W. Franko. 2020. Economic segregation and unequal policy responsiveness. Political Behavior 42: 845–864.
Ford, R., and W. Jennings. 2020. The changing cleavage politics of Western Europe. Annual Review of Political Science 23: 295–314.
Gidron, N., and P.A. Hall. 2017. The politics of social status: Economic and cultural roots of populist right. The British Journal of Sociology 68 (1): 57–84.
Gimpel, J.G., and K.A. Karnes. 2006. The rural side of the urban-rural gap. Psonline 1: 467–472.
Gimpel, J.G., N. Lovin, B. Moy, and A. Reeves. 2020. The urban-rural gulf in American political behavior. Political Behavior 42: 1343–1368.
Granda, P., C. Wolf, and R. Hadordn. 2010. Harmonizing survey data. In Survey Methods in Multinational, Multiregional, and Multicultural Contexts, ed. J.A. Harkness, et al. New Jersey: Wiley.
Hawkins, K.A., R.E. Carlin, L. Littvay, and C. Rovira Kaltwasser, eds. 2018. The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory and Analysis. New York: Routledge.
Jennings, W., and G. Stoker. 2016. The bifurcation of politics: Two Englands. The Political Quarterly 87 (3): 372–382.
Johnson, K.M., and D.T. Lichter. 2019. Rural depopulation: Growth and decline processes over the past century. Rural Sociology 84 (1): 3–27.
Lago, I., S. Bermúdez, M. Guinjoan, K. Rowe, and P. Simón. 2019. Party mobilisation and electoral systems. Government and Opposition 54: 1–24.
Li, Y., H. Westlund, and Y. Liu. 2019. Why some rural areas deciles while some other not: An overview of rural evolution in the world. Journal of Rural Studies 68: 135–143.
Lijphart, A. 1999. Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lipset, S.M., and S. Rokkan. 1967. Cleavage structures, party systems and voter alignments: An introduction. In Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, ed. S.M. Lipset and S. Rokkan. New York: Free.
Margalit, Y. 2019. Economic insecurity and the causes of populism, reconsidered. Journal of Economic Perspectives 33 (4): 152–170.
Martínez-Fernández, C., I. Audirac, S. Fol, and E. Cunningham-Sabot. 2012. Shrinking cities: Urban challenges of globalization. International Journal of Urban Regional Research 36 (2): 213–225.
Maxwell, R. 2020. Geographic divides and cosmopolitanism: Evidence from Switzerland. Comparative Political Studies 53 (13): 2061–2090.
McCann, P. 2020. Perceptions of regional inequality and the geography of discontent: Insights from the UK. Regional Studies 54 (2): 256–267.
McKay, L. 2019. ‘Left behind’ people, or places? The role of local economies in perceived community representation. Electoral Studies 60: 102146.
McKay, L., W. Jennings, and G. Stoker. 2021. Political trust in the “Places That Don’t Matter.” Frontiers in Political Science. Political Participation 26: 642236.
Mitsch, F., N. Lee, and E.R. Morrow. 2021. Faith no more? The diverge of political trust between urban and rural Europe. Political Geography 89: 103426.
Rickard, S.J. 2020. Economic geography: Politics and policy. Annual Review of Political Science 23: 187–202.
Rodden, J.A. 2019. Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide. New York: Basic Books.
Rodríguez-Pose, A. 2018. The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do about it). Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 11 (1): 189–209.
Rodríguez-Pose, A. 2020. The rise of populism and the revenge of the places that don’t matter. LSE Public Policy Review 1 (4): 1–9.
Shucksmith, M., and D.L. Brown. 2016. Framing rural studies in the Global North. In Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies, ed. M. Shucksmith and D.L. Brown. New York: Routledge.
Singh, S., A. Blais, and I. Lago. 2011. Winning and competitiveness as determinants of political support. Social Science Quarterly 92: 695–709.
United Nations. 2019. 2018 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects. New York: United Nations.
van der Meer, T.W.G. 2017. Political trust and the ‘crisis of democracy.’ In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, ed. W.R. Thompson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wilkinson, W. 2019. The density divide: Urbanization, polarization and populist backlash. Niskanen Center Research Paper.
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge support from the Spanish Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities (Grant No. AEI/FEDER CSO2017-85024-C2-1-P) and ICREA under the ICREA Academia program.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
None.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Appendix
Individual-level control variables
-
Majority/minority status is a dummy variable coded 1 if the respondent voted for the actual governing party—either the governing party or one among several in a governing coalition—and 0 if the respondent supported the losing side. I focus on the last parliamentary election held in each country immediately before the respective fieldwork of the ESS. The variable ranges from 0.136 in France to 0.417 in Croatia, with a mean of 0.289 and a standard deviation of 0.081.
-
National economic performance. Individuals are asked to evaluate national economic conditions on a scale ranging from 0 (extremely dissatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied). The variable ranges from 3.032 in Croatia to 7.375 in Norway, with a mean of 5.157 and a standard deviation of 1.299.
-
Interest in politics. The ESS asks respondents whether they are very interested, quite interested, hardly interested, or not at all interested in politics. The variable will be treated as a continuous one: the higher the values, the more interested in politics the respondent is.
-
Income measures the household’s total net income in deciles within each country.
-
Education is a continuous variable capturing the number of years of full-time education completed by respondents.
-
Female is a dummy variable coded 1 for women and 0 for men.
-
Age is measured in years.
-
Unfortunately, in the round 9 of the ESS there are no questions capturing corruption perceptions, but transparency perceptions. Transparency captures the perception of transparency for political decisions in the corresponding country.Footnote 4 The possible responses are not at all, very little, some, a lot, and a great deal. The variable will be treated as a continuous one: the higher the values, the greater the perception of transparency. The variable ranges from 1.884 in Spain to 3.189 in Switzerland, with a mean of 2.391 and a standard deviation of 0.327.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lago, I. Rural decline and satisfaction with democracy. Acta Polit 57, 753–771 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-021-00221-8
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-021-00221-8