RUDE: The Rural-Urban Divide in Europe

民粹主义和两极分化的上升，加上民主合法性的下降，都指向欧洲民主国家的危机。这场危机具有区域性：农村和城市地区之间的政治和文化鸿沟。该项目考察了城乡居民是否以及如何与合法性信仰，社会身份，不公正和威胁的看法，政治和社会态度以及欧洲公民的政治行为有关。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性的影响（主题4）。只有当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，稳定的分裂才会出现（主题1）。第二，它考察了全球化所起的作用：日益扩大的城乡经济差距造成了社会地位的威胁，从而加剧了城乡政治差距（主题2）。该项目将把对所有欧洲国家的广泛比较研究与对五个已建立的欧洲民主国家的深入分析结合起来。该项目将为欧洲政治中的城乡差距提供重要的新证据，这将使我们能够研究当前民主危机的后果和解决办法，从而吸引学术界和决策者的关注。项目的协调、议程的设定和工作包的及时交付将由法兰克福团队负责。特别是，该项目将通过举办五个内部研讨会和使用共享云服务器来协调。

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.