RUDE: The Rural-Urban Divide in Europe

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Rising populism and polarization, coupled with declining democratic legitimacy, all point toward acrisis in European democracies. This crisis has a regional dimension: a political and perhaps culturaldivide between rural and urban areas. The project examines whether and how urban-ruralresidency is related to divides in legitimacy beliefs, social identities, perceptions of injustice andthreat, political and social attitudes and political behavior of European citizens. It explores“Democratic governance in a turbulent age” from different thematic angles. First, it deals withshifting identities and their consequences for democratic governance and political representation(theme 4). Stable cleavages only emerge when struggles for identity are accompanied byperceptions of social inequality and unfair resource distribution (theme 1). Second, it examines therole played by globalization: increasing rural-urban economic divides create social status threatswhich exacerbate rural-urban political divides (theme 2). The project will combine a broadcomparative study of all European countries with an in-depth analysis of five established Europeandemocracies. The project will result in the provision of significant new evidence on rural-urbandisparities in European politics, which will allow us to examine the consequences of – and cures for– the current crisis of democracy, thereby engaging both academic and policymaking audiences.The coordination of the project, setting of the agenda, and the timely delivery of work packageswill be the responsibility of the Frankfurt team. In particular, the project will be coordinated byholding five internal workshops and using a shared cloud server.