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

该项目有助于最近关于空间不平等的社会和政治后果的政治和学术辩论。欧盟国家内部日益扩大的地区间差距被认为是社会凝聚力的风险，是社会和政治分裂的储存库，也是不公正和边缘化的根源。关于“不重要地区的报复”的争论认为，民族国家内部的空间不平等导致弱势地区的人口普遍不满，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视为弱势地区“被抛在后面的感觉”的结果，因此出现了一种“不满地理”。到目前为止，关于不满的辩论主要是由西欧和美国的情况决定的。然而，与中东欧相比，民粹主义兴起的社会空间环境截然不同。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，而中东欧地区的空间不平等是在不同的背景下形成的。后社会主义转型、外迁、外国直接投资流入、低工资就业经济和农业贫困的空间不平等影响是解释中东欧现有空间不平等模式及其后果的概念之一。因此，我们认为将重点放在中东欧，包括经历后共产主义转型的中欧国家和前东德，是一个有希望的领域，可以在空间不平等的背景下提供有关民粹主义的见解。在这个项目(1)中，我们对关于新兴不满地理的辩论的重要论点进行了详细的实证研究。特别是，我们研究了区域间不平等如何导致个人层面的社会经济不平等，它如何反映在个人和社区前景的主观看法和被遗忘的感觉中，以及区域效应如何在政治观点和选举行为中表现出来；(2)我们对该主题进行了国际比较，这使我们能够超越单一国家的研究，并提供更细致入微的分析；(3)研究了近年来地区不平等加剧、民粹主义在政治舞台上发挥重要作用的三个中东欧国家；(4)我们采用混合方法研究这一问题，以便既确定空间不平等的可测量影响，又了解生活在“落后”地区的人们的看法和观点。

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.