The Geography of EU Discontent and the Regional Development Trap
2024/04/17 by Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Lewis Dijkstra +1 · 1 voice · 44 citations
Social Sciences · #Social Policy and Reform Studies #Regional Development and Policy #European Union Policy and Governance
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00130095.2024.2337657
Abstract
While in recent times many regions have flourished, many others are stuck —or are at risk of becoming stuck— in a development trap. Such regions experience decline in economic growth, employment, and productivity relative to their neighbours and to their own past trajectories. Prolonged periods in development traps are leading to political dissatisfaction and unrest. Such discontent is often translated into support for anti-system parties at the ballot box. In this paper we study the link between the risk, intensity, and duration of regional development traps and the rise of discontent in the European Union (EU) —proxied by the support for Eurosceptic parties in national elections between 2013 and 2022— using an econometric analysis at a regional level. The results highlight the strong connection between being stuck in a development trap, often in middle- or high-income regions, and support for Eurosceptic parties. They also suggest that the longer the period of stagnation, the stronger the support for parties opposed to European integration. This relationship is also robust to considering only the most extreme Eurosceptic parties or to including parties that display more moderate levels of Euroscepticism.
Citations
Cited by
- The political extremes and innovation: How support for extreme parties shapes overall and green scientific research and technological innovation in Europe
- An evolutionary approach to regional development traps in Europe
- Generalized loss of trust following political betrayal: Cross‐country evidence in the context of elections
- A map of discontent: economic distress or public service deprivation?
- The four waves of regional policy: towards an era of trade-offs?
- Discontent in ‘left-behind places’? How perception of space and local political climate matter for the success of right-wing populism in rural areas of Germany
- Places that matter and places that don’t: territorial revenge and counter-revenge in Poland
- Regional inequality of the European ETS-2
- The heroes and killjoys of green megaprojects: a feminist critique
- Strengthening the local heart of Europe
- Forging a sustainable future together: Cohesion Policy at its defining moment
- Geographies of feeling stuck behind and populist voting in The Netherlands
- Place matters for the poor: Digitisation and spatial inequality in Chile
- Why size really doesn’t matter: from megacity myths to place-sensitive prosperity
- Regional development traps in Europe: a study of occupational trajectories of regions
- Geography, the foundational economy, and the fallen-below
- Leveraging Entrepreneurship Education in Italy’s Inner Areas: Implications for Regional Planning
- The impact of Brexit on SME lending in the UK
- Untangling regional development traps through narratives
- Behavioural theory and regional development: nurturing cultures of possibility
- The polarisation of Italian metropolitan areas, 2000–2018: structural change, technology and growth
- How generational replacement feeds the urban-rural divide: Evidence from Switzerland (1995–2023)
- Unequal cities, unhappy lives? The role of interpersonal and territorial inequalities in shaping life satisfaction in European cities
- Taking ‘fallen-below’ seriously: Spacing, placing, and scaling foundational liveability
- The making and unmaking of uneven development: the role of anchor firms in creating and overcoming industrial decline in East Germany
- Addressing interregional inequality with Chinese characteristics? The Mountain–Sea Collaboration model in Zhejiang
- Unpacking regional development in the EU: The interplay of cohesion, institutions, and sustainability
- Voting red again: how social capital and local change drove the Trump swing
- A Union under siege, or a Union besieging itself? The EU's new budget and the future of European integration
- Labour-Intensive Geographies and Support for Radical-Right Parties
- Labour productivity disparities in European regions: the impact of agglomeration effects
- One Kazakhstan, multiple nations: on a growing regional divide amidst economic dynamism
- Industrial policy, multilevel governance and regional development: the case of the UK semiconductor industry
- Does regional context affect populist voting? A comparative multilevel analysis from Czechia and eastern Germany
- Beyond path dependence: a methodological review for studying regional futures
- Zero-sum thinking in regional development? – Green and/or inclusive socio-economic development dynamics in challenged regions
- The geography of the green transition: Performance, vulnerabilities and opportunities
- Municipalities: Actors of Change in Regional Development?
- The geography of discontent revisited: decoupling attitudinal clustering and affective intensification in urban Britain
- Investment or Losers’ Compensation? The Mis-Selling and Re-Selling of EU Cohesion Policy
- Answering the governance gap in energy transition policies. Finding “acceptancy”, a representation discrepancy?
- Unpacking Endogeneity: Growth, Discontent and Cohesion Policy in the EU Regions
- Geography of discontent and beyond: Extreme voting, protestations, riots and violence, and their spatial content
- Does population aging hinder regional innovation? A perspective on complementarity and substitution effects
Discussions
Related