Social and Political Consequences of Spatial Inequalities: East-Central Europe Case Study

空间不平等的社会和政治后果：中东欧案例研究

• 批准号: 502306079
• 负责人: Privatdozent Dr. Andreas Klärner
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Narodowe Centrum Nauki
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/502306079?language=en
• 关键词: Social; Political; Consequences; Spatial; Inequalities

This project contributes to the recent political and scholarly debate on the social and political consequences of spatial inequalities. Growing inter-regional disparities within EU countries have been described as a risk to social cohesion, repository of social and political cleavages, and source of perceived injustice and marginalization. The debate about “the revenge of places that don’t matter” argues that spatial inequalities within nation states lead to widespread discontent in the populations of disadvantaged regions who feel “left behind” by ongoing economic changes and neglected by central governments. The rise of (right-wing) populist parties and movements are seen as a consequence of these “feelings of being left behind” in disadvantaged regions, and thus a “geography of discontent” is posited.So far, the geography of discontent debate has been informed mostly by the situation in Western Europe and the United States. However, in comparison to East-Central Europe, the socio-spatial circumstances for the rise of populism are vastly different. While in the US and Western Europe, the economic, demographic, and infrastructural decline of left-behind regions has been attributed to post-industrialization, technological change, and globalization, spatial inequality in East-Central Europe has been formed in a different context. Spatially unequal effects of the post-socialist transition, out-migration, inflows of foreign direct investments, low-wage job economies, and agricultural poverty are among the concepts that explain existing spatial inequality patterns and their consequences in East-Central Europe. Accordingly, we consider a focus on East-Central Europe, to which we include the Central European countries that experienced the post-communist transition, and the former East Germany, to be a promising area in which to contribute insight concerning populism in the context of spatial inequality. In this project (1) we take a detailed empirical look at important arguments of the debate about emerging geographies of discontent. In particular, we examine how inter-regional inequality contributes to individual-level socio-economic inequalities, how it is reflected in subjective perceptions of individual and community prospects and feelings of being left-behind, and how regional effects manifest in political opinions and electoral behavior; (2) We conduct an international comparison of the topic, which enables us to go beyond single-country studies and deliver a more nuanced analysis; (3) we focus on three East-Central European countries where regional inequalities have grown in recent years and where populism plays an important role in their political arenas; (4) We apply a mixed-method approach to the issue so as to both identify the measurable effects of spatial inequality and understand the perceptions and perspectives of people living in “left behind” places.

这个项目有助于最近的政治和学术辩论的社会和政治后果的空间不平等。欧盟国家内部日益扩大的区域间差距被认为是社会凝聚力的风险，是社会和政治分裂的根源，也是不公正和边缘化的根源。关于“无关紧要的地方的报复”的争论认为，民族国家内部的空间不平等导致了贫困地区人口的普遍不满，他们感到被持续的经济变革“抛在后面”，被中央政府忽视。（右翼）民粹主义政党和运动的兴起被认为是弱势地区“落后感”的结果，因此出现了“不满地理”。迄今为止，关于不满地理的争论主要是以西欧和美国的情况为基础的。然而，与中东欧相比，民粹主义兴起的社会空间环境大不相同。在美国和西欧，落后地区的经济、人口和基础设施衰退被归因于后工业化、技术变革和全球化，而中东欧的空间不平等是在不同的背景下形成的。后社会主义转型的空间不平等影响、向外移民、外国直接投资流入、低工资就业经济和农业贫困是解释中东欧现有空间不平等模式及其后果的概念。因此，我们认为重点放在中东欧，其中包括经历后共产主义过渡的中欧国家和前东德德国，是一个有前途的领域，在空间不平等的背景下贡献关于民粹主义的见解。在这个项目（1）中，我们对关于新兴不满地区的辩论的重要论点进行了详细的实证研究。特别是，我们研究了地区间的不平等如何导致个人层面的社会经济不平等，它是如何反映在个人和社区前景的主观看法和感觉落后，以及地区效应如何体现在政治观点和选举行为;（2）我们对这一主题进行国际比较，这使我们能够超越单一国家的研究，提供更细致入微的分析;（3）我们聚焦于三个中东欧国家，这些国家近年来区域不平等加剧，民粹主义在其政治舞台上发挥着重要作用;（4）我们采用混合方法来研究这个问题，以便确定空间不平等的可衡量影响，并了解生活在“落后”地区的人们的看法和观点。