3. The emergence of “geographies of discontent”

Most recently scholars have suggested that although the economic and cultural approaches help explain the rise in discontent in western democracies to an extent, geographic and demographic developments may also be playing an important role in driving those high levels of dissatisfaction in spatially distinctive geographies of discontent. Indeed, this century has seen a growing spatial socio-economic and cultural divergence between peripheral, rural, remote areas that have been left behind and more centrally located innovative and productive areas (De Lange et al. 2023, Iammarino et al. 2019, McCann 2020, Rodríguez-Pose 2018, Rodríguez-Pose 2020, Kenny and Luca 2021). Rodríguez-Pose (2018) argues that such spatial and territorial inequalities are more important than interpersonal inequalities in the effort to understand high levels of discontent in the West. Electoral behaviour in the last decade does indeed suggest that there is a rise in polarisation and tensions between growing city and urban areas and declining rural and remote areas and that “place” seems to play a strong role in people’s levels of satisfaction with their government (Kenny and Luca 2021). Although that divide has long existed in western states, it had seemed to be diminishing in the late 20th century. In 2013, Eurofund (2013) found no political polarisation between urban and rural dwellers before the economic crisis of 2008-2013. However, the financial crisis of 2008 and its repercussions appear to have reversed that trend, with those developments prompting Rodríguez-Pose (2018, 2020) to coin the phrase “the revenge of the places that don’t matter”, as well as driving McCann (2020) to employ the concept “geographies of discontent” and Munis (2020) to speak of “place-based resentment” (Marlar 2022). Those authors have all put forward the thesis that this feeling of being “left behind” has resulted in some form of protest voting in those places. McKay et al. (2021) have added, however, that different local “left-behind” contexts are provoking different kinds of grievance, with an impact on both the level and expression of discontent.

A central argument explaining why geographies of discontent have formed is that regional economic inequalities have increased over the last decades in many industrialised countries, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis (Marlar 2022, The Economist 2016). Globalisation and the “urbanised knowledge economy” have created new spatial imbalances and inequalities in economic development, opportunities and living standards, in part because the knowledge economy is much more strongly dependent on a geographic clustering of knowledge and skills and high-density levels than traditional jobs in the industrial sector (Rodríguez-Pose 2018, Florida 2021, Marlar 2022). In many cases, peripheral areas with long distances to urban areas, as well as old industrial hubs facing global competition, have been “left behind” economically, with many experiencing growing levels of unemployment, poverty and economic decline (Larsson et al. 2021, De Lange et al. 2023, Koeppen et al. 2021). Mascherini and colleagues (2023) have found that the rural-urban gap in the EU has widened particularly in terms of income employment and opportunities. Scholars even argue that some of those areas are falling into a “development trap” (Iammarino et al. 2019), a term that refers to regions that are experiencing “lower growth in income, productivity, and employment compared to: (i) their own historical performance; (ii) the country in which they are in; and/ or (iii) the EU” (Rodríguez-Pose et al. 2023b).

Furthermore, EU Cohesion and Regional Policy and Common Agricultural Policy may not always be systematically contributing to economic convergence in Europe. The objective of the former is to support the competitiveness of regions but that focus on the goal of competitiveness may be harming declining regions (Rodríguez-Pose 2018). Similarly, the modernising reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU have put pressure on many farmers in Europe to expand and intensify farming through technology and have led to a dependency on bank loans and food chains (Deppisch et al. 2022). Most recently, repercussions of the European Green Deal have been identified as threatening to increase real or perceived economic inequalities between territories. Indeed, many left-behind areas often also have a high dependency on transportation, heavy industry and agriculture, and will need to significantly restructure if countries are to meet Green deal Objectives. That may lead to negative economic repercussions in those areas and resentment. (Rodríguez-Pose and Bartalucci 2023).

Many academics have shown that people who live in those economically stagnating or falling-behind areas have lost trust in their representative governments. Indeed, support for anti-establishment and populist parties has been shown to be generally higher in those regions in Europe (Dijkstra et al. 2020). McKay’s (2019) research has found that people have a higher grievance level if they perceive the national economy to be doing better than their own. Furthermore, Dijkstra et al. (2020) have found that the longer and more severe the development trap experienced by a given region, the higher the vote share is for Eurosceptic parties, particularly if those areas are also experiencing high levels of immigration (Dijkstra et al. 2020, Rodríguez-Pose et al, 2023b). Findings by Rodríguez-Pose (2018) show, however, that it is not necessarily the most economically marginalised groups that express the highest levels of discontent, but rather the “squeezed middle” living in left-behind areas that experience or perceive their economic situation to be deteriorating. Larsson and colleagues (2021) further note that when trying to understand economic drivers of geographies of discontent it is crucial to understand that people and communities often experience and perceive inequality and feelings of being left behind in relation to nearby places and regions and not just distant cities and wider urban areas.

The rural-urban divide is not only economic; there are also signs of social division and inequality between central and peripheral areas. Indeed, many rural and remote areas are experiencing both a decline in and ageing of their populations. Such trends have resulted in both a closure and/or reduction of public services overall and a high level of pressure on existing services, partly as a result of the elderly’s high reliance on the latter. Public service deprivation in peripheral areas can be linked to governments and elected leaders deliberately choosing to spend limited public-sector resources on areas with a higher population density in a bid to increase their popularity. (Ballard-Rosa et al. 2023, Mascherini et al. 2023, Rickardsson 2021). Indeed, public services are often the most direct way in which people interact with the state, so they strongly influence voting behaviour (Golden and Min 2013). Service provision is a core element of accountable governance and less accessible services can lead to dissatisfaction and distrust.

Although limited in number, recent findings have found that diminishing or unequal access to public services such as schools, healthcare and public transport in peripheral areas is playing a role in the formation of geographies of discontent (Rodríguez-Pose et al. 2023b). In Italy, Cremaschi and colleagues (2022) found a causal link between voting for the far right and public service deprivation. In their findings they show that the geographical differences in far-right support match areas suffering from fewer public services. The authors explain that this phenomenon is due to people feeling and experiencing that there is competition for these limited services, which in turn sparks fear concerning high levels of immigration. In addition, in her study, Nyholt (2023) found that Danish voters tend to punish local government politicians at the polls when their local area has been affected by school and hospital closures. Stroppe’s (2023) study showed that a long-term lack of public services had impacted discontent and contributed to the formation of a spatial divide in levels of discontent in Germany. There is therefore evidence that access to public services and the social inequality repercussions it has on populations is impacting levels of discontent. However, there are still important gaps in research as to where access to services is deteriorating, who is being affected and discontent thresholds. (Rodríguez-Pose et al. 2023b).

Beyond provision of public services, formal and informal government institutions have also been shown to have an impact on people’s levels of satisfaction with their government. According to Charron and colleagues (2018), regions with a higher quality of government – referring to a government’s overall ability to act impartially, efficiently and without corruption throughout its services and institutions – show higher economic, environmental and public-health performance and, crucially, show higher levels of social equality and social trust, with the latter in turn positively impacting well-being and satisfaction (Charron et al. 2018).

People tend to form a social and cultural identity around the place they live and feel attached to their village, town or region (Cramer 2016). As De Lange and colleagues (2023) describe, “this positive in-group identity might result in feelings of resentment towards out-groups living in other geographical areas” if other geographical areas are in reality better off or are perceived to be so. Mascherini and colleagues (2023) have found that people living in rural areas are significantly more likely to perceive recognition gaps than left-behind people in urban areas. That has led to a phenomenon that Munis (2020) refers to as “place resentment”, whereby people living in peripheral areas feel neglected, disrespected, marginalised and left behind by their elite and often geographically distant national governments and politicians (McKay et al. 2021). A strong cultural dimension contributes to such resentment. People living in rural areas feel that urban dwellers do not value their norms, lifestyles and traditions and that cities and urban areas exert cultural dominance over theirs (De Lange et al. 2023, McCann 2020). That perception of injustice is not unjustified; cultural establishments and the media, as well as parliaments, courts and universities, are often found in capital cities.

Ballas and Thanis (2022) suggest that negative media and political discourse on left-behind areas is aggravating that cultural divide. Studies have also shown that populist parties and leaders have been able to take advantage of place resentment and are not only a result of rising regional resentment, but have also had their own role to play in driving it. Indeed, populism taps into an anti-elite “us-versus-them” sentiment that can be found in many rural areas. De Ruyter and colleagues (2021) have shown in the Netherlands, for example, that political discontent is both a cause and consequence of the rise of populist parties, which have inflamed rural discontent by purposely criticising the urban elite.

Finally, studies have found that the media is not necessarily only expressing discontent; it is also playing a role in forming it, in part because the media often needs to reduce the complexity of reality and encourages simple narratives. Furthermore, many traditional media outlets have been the target of populist agendas and portrayed as being part of corrupt and urban elite groups. That strategy has allowed room for the growth of mostly online media platforms that have both created and spread populist content. (Nilsson and Lundgren 2019).

Two overarching explanations, which are not mutually exclusive, are often put forward by academics in the field of geographies of discontent. The first has been put forward in the three preceding sections, namely that geographical divides in levels of discontent are fundamentally driven by a complex combination of economic, social and cultural factors (Koeppen et al. 2021). The second suggests that it is not the context and places where people are living that are driving discontent, but rather the individual characteristics of the people living in those regions. That argument suggests the higher levels of discontent in specific regions may be due to a high concentration of individuals who have specific characteristics connected to anti-establishment voting, such as higher age, male, low education and low income. Such compositional effects emerge because urban centres tend to offer more opportunities to younger, well-educated people, who often also hold more liberal or cosmopolitan attitudes. That leads to growing differences in population characteristics and value systems between rural and urban areas, with cities being characterised by more progressive social values. (Kenny and Luca 2021). Kenny and Luca (2021) argue that a ”fracture” is indeed emerging between metropolitan and more rural areas, caused by “socio-economic divergence, discernible differences in collective worldviews and attitudes” (Florida 2021). As Larsson (2021) notes, discontent is “fundamentally a geographic process, driven by and reinforced by the sorting of different socio-economic and racial and ethnic groups into distinctive geographies, which in turn reinforce economic, racial and cultural divides”.

Whether it is places or people driving discontent is indeed much debated in academia, with studies finding contradictory results. Van Vulpen et al. (2023) found in the Netherlands that regional economic development did not seem to explain political discontent. Koeppen et al. (2021) found that both place and people played a mixed role in explaining dissatisfaction, whereas Gallego et al. (2014), found individual characteristics to be the most influential in terms of voting behaviour. Research by Mascherini and colleagues (2023) revealed that urban areas still have higher levels of social tolerance and content once compositional factors such as sex, education and age have been taken into account.

Discontent is a complex concept that is both difficult to define and measure. A unified definition of discontent does not currently exist. For the purpose of this study, we loosely define the term as the feeling of dissatisfaction that people may experience towards their government and that expresses itself in electoral processes. In most studies on geographies of discontent, discontent is measured by protest voting, referring to all votes cast for populist or anti-establishment parties, and not for example solely levels of apathy and voter turnout (Rodríguez-Pose 2018, De Ruyter et al. 2021). That is explained by the fact that, as described above, discontent in left-behind areas is the result of, and characterised by, a unique combination of economic, social, cultural and demographic factors that have led people in such areas to feel ignored, neglected and marginalised by political, economic and cultural elites. Furthermore, studies have found that although rural residents are less likely to be informally politically engaged than urban residents, such as by attending protests or signing petitions for example, they are more likely to vote despite a higher level of dissatisfaction. (Mascherini et al. 2023, Kenny and Luca 2021). Furthermore, the more extreme the distrust and dissatisfaction with democracy is, the more likely voters are to turn their backs on established parties and vote for a new party (Haugsgjerd 2019). Relatively recently formed populist and anti-establishment parties and their agendas therefore become an attractive alternative for voters in peripheral areas that have high levels of dissatisfaction with their government. At the heart of populism lies the idea of the “ordinary people” battling against “the elite”, with both terms being open to interpretation (Mudde 2004). Populist parties are therefore conceptually close to the phenomenon of rural resentment, with the elite perceived as being associated with urban areas and urban dwellers.

Although election data in most liberal democracies are reliable and widely available, they cannot provide a comprehensive understanding of discontent and its drivers. Discontent and resentment are complex feelings that can stem from a multitude of sources and issues. As Van Vulpen and colleagues (2023) remark, we cannot decipher from voting data alone what kind of resentment is being expressed and towards what institution or phenomena. Moreover, not all discontent is expressed through a vote for an anti-establishment party or even by voting. Finally, not all votes for populist parties necessarily represent a protest vote. Many scholars have therefore employed other methods such as surveys, analysis of media coverage or even measurement of levels of cyberhate crime instead of, or as well as, voting data to measure and understand discontent (Denti and Faggian 2021, Kenny and Luca 2021, Van Vulpen et al. 2023).