Faith no more? The divergence of political trust between urban and rural Europe

Abstract

Events such as Brexit and the Gilet Jaunes protests have highlighted the spatial nature of populism. In particular, there has been increasing political divergence between urban and rural areas, with rural areas apparently having lost faith in national governments. We investigate this divergence using data on over 125,000 EU citizens from the European Social Survey from 2008-2018. We show that people in rural areas have lower political trust than urban or peri-urban residents, with this difference clear for six different forms of political institutions, including politicians, political parties, and national parliaments. There has been divergence of political trust between urban and rural Europe since 2008, although this is primarily driven by Southern Europe. While these results can partly be explained by demographic differences between cities and the countryside, divergent economic experiences, differences in values, and perceptions that public services are less effective outside of urban areas, there is a residual 'rural effect' beyond this. We argue that the polarization of urban-rural political trust has important implications for the functioning of European democracies.

The stories we tell ourselves: Local newspaper reporting and support for the radical right

“…Essletzbichler and co-authors report, for instance, that ''[t]he populist vote shares ranged from (...) 21.3 to 75.6% in British Local Authorities and from 4.1 to 95.3% in US counties'' (Essletzbichler et al, 2018, p. 80). In this regard, there is a new conventional wisdom, in large part influenced by the media's portrayal of the political landscape in the United States and the United Kingdom, which describes RRP vote -and the populist vote, more broadly -as a mostly rural phenomenon (Mitsch et al, 2021). But, while the gaps in voting patterns between urban and rural communities do exist, the geographies of electoral outcomes are somewhat more complicated than this rather simplistic view would lead us to think (Becker et al, 2017;Essletzbichler et al, 2018;Rossi, 2018).…”

The Party on Remote Ground: Disengaging and Disappearing?

“…media, parties may now consider it unnecessarily complex and costly to invest in grassroots structures in remote areas. For their part, citizens in those areas may be less inclined to engage anyway, given their higher levels of apathy and distrust towards parties (Lago, 2021;Mitsch et al, 2021). Certainly, the few relevant international studies point to difficulties in maintaining the party on the ground in more sparsely populated areas.…”

“…This is made more plausible by the fact that discontent and apathy towards politics are higher in peripheral areas, where citizens are more likely to consider themselves 'left behind' by distant metropolitan elites (Jennings et al, 2021). Research in Europe has shown that people outside urban areas are less satisfied with democracy (Lago, 2021) and have lower levels of political trust (Mitsch et al, 2021). There are thus good reasons to believe that people will be even less inclined to participate as grassroots members of the major parties in remote areas than they are in urban ones.…”

The Disparity Between Urban andRural Areas in Citizen Satisfaction with Local Public Services

“…Access to public services in urban and rural areas may reflect inequalities, showing superior development in cities or centers compared to towns or the periphery [1], our urban versus rural approach is established due to differences in access to various public services between urban and rural areas.…”

“…Several studies analyze the disparity between urban parish and rural parish, in issues related to health [2], employ [3], voting intention [1], transport [4], land use [5], sports services [6], economic growth [7], life satisfaction [8].…”