The geography of autocracy. Regime preferences along the rural-urban divide in 32 countries

Confidence Across Cleavage: The Swiss Rural–Urban Divide, Place‐Based Identity and Political Trust

“…The argument behind this finding is that rural residents usually feel as losers of social, political, and economic processes and as if they are left behind their urban counterparts (Cramer, 2016; Hochschild, 2018; Rodríguez‐Pose, 2018). Rural residents on average exhibit lower levels of education, social status and worse occupation opportunities, which might lead them to blame the political elite for not granting more resources to rural places (Gordon, 2018; Schoene, 2019; Zumbrunn & Freitag, 2023). Further, rural residents tend to be more conservative, traditional, and nationalistic and feel threatened in their values by urban residents and the political elite, who hold more libertarian, alternative and green values.…”

“…Further, rural residents tend to be more conservative, traditional, and nationalistic and feel threatened in their values by urban residents and the political elite, who hold more libertarian, alternative and green values. Rural residents hence fear that the political elite might not represent their values or interests enough (Cramer, 2016; Gordon, 2018; Mitsch et al., 2021; Schoene, 2019; Zumbrunn & Freitag, 2023). Rural residents also live physically further away from the centres in which political institutions are set, which could make them feel alienated from politics, while service provision is usually worse in rural than in urban places.…”

“…In this sense, place‐based research is different from concepts such as localism or regionalism (Briffault, 2000), which are about one specific location, e.g., a canton or a municipality. While such local or regional identities certainly matter, too — especially in federal Switzerland (see also Müller, 2013; Schroedter et al., 2015) — this new research defines place through different attributes such as socioeconomic composition, values, political power or the common feeling of being left behind (Cramer, 2016; Hochschild, 2018; Maxwell 2020; Wuthnow, 2018; Zumbrunn & Freitag, 2023). This is why place can form an identity through a number of characteristics, e.g., a spatial dimension such as the landscape, a political‐economic dimension, as for example universities are usually located in cities, shared social experiences, e.g., a higher likelihood of mingling with foreigners in cities, or a symbolic understanding of the place and its values (Bell, 1992; Cain, 2021).…”

“…As place‐based identity increases, the mechanism of being left behind should however start diverging the level of political trust between urbanites and ruralites. Urbanites – who are said to be in a more advantaged position – should realize this and experience an increase in political trust as their place‐based identity grows, because it is the political system and politicians themselves that cater to their needs (Zumbrunn & Freitag, 2023). This is not the case for ruralites, whose level of political trust should not increase with their level of place‐based identity, as they will realize that they are being left behind .…”

Politicized science and rural–urban divides: Exploring how rurality in the place of residence and red and blue media use affected attitudes toward scientists before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…In fact, previous studies on the role of place-based identity conducted outside of the U.S. showed that rural-urban divides in values tend to have connections with political system, including governmental trust (Mitsch et al, 2021) and regime preferences (Zumbrunn & Freitag, 2023. ) Hence, to better understand about consequences of place-based identity, it is particularly crucial to test the link between rurality, place-based identity, and attitudes toward scientists.…”