The Rural-Urban Divide in Europe

民粹主义和两极分化的抬头，加上民主合法性的下降，都指向欧洲民主国家的危机。这场危机具有地区性：城乡之间存在政治甚至文化上的鸿沟。该项目审查城乡居民身份是否以及如何与欧洲公民在合法性信仰、社会认同、不公正和威胁的看法、政治和社会态度以及政治行为方面的差异有关。它从不同的主题角度探讨了“动荡时代的民主治理”。首先，它涉及身份的转变及其对民主治理和政治代表的影响(主题4)。只有当对身份的斗争伴随着对社会不平等和不公平资源分配的看法时，才会出现稳定的分裂(主题1)。第二，它审查了全球化所起的作用：日益扩大的城乡经济鸿沟造成社会地位威胁，从而加剧城乡政治鸿沟(主题2)。该项目将结合对所有欧洲国家的广泛比较研究和对五个成熟的欧洲民主国家的深入分析。该项目将为欧洲政治中的城乡差距提供重要的新证据，这将使我们能够审查当前民主危机的后果和解决办法，从而吸引学术界和政策制定者。项目的协调、议程的制定和工作方案的及时交付将由法兰克福团队负责。特别是，将通过举办五次内部讲习班和使用共享的云服务器来协调该项目。

Rising populism and polarization, coupled with declining democratic legitimacy, all point toward a crisis in European democracies. This crisis has a regional dimension: a political and perhaps cultural divide between rural and urban areas. The project examines whether and how urban-rural residency is related to divides in legitimacy beliefs, social identities, perceptions of injustice and threat, 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 with shifting identities and their consequences for democratic governance and political representation (theme 4). Stable cleavages only emerge when struggles for identity are accompanied by perceptions of social inequality and unfair resource distribution (theme 1). Second, it examines the role played by globalization: increasing rural-urban economic divides create social status threats which exacerbate rural-urban political divides (theme 2). The project will combine a broad comparative study of all European countries with an in-depth analysis of five established European democracies. The project will result in the provision of significant new evidence on rural-urban disparities 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 packages will be the responsibility of the Frankfurt team. In particular, the project will be coordinated by holding five internal workshops and using a shared cloud server.