Urbanisation and the shifting conditions of the state as a territorial‐political community: A study of the geographies of political efficacy

Abstract

This paper contributes to recent debates on the geographies of discontent and the rise of populism as reflective of increasing territorial inequalities and a deepening divide between prosperous urban cores and declining peripheries (McCann, 2020;Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). While unequal economic geographies, as well as claims related to the loss of territorial sovereignty (Menon & Wager, 2020), are essential to understanding the current geographies of discontent, in this paper we suggest a complementary explanation for the alleged revenge of the "places that don't matter" (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). We argue that geographies of discontent result from profound changes in the conditions of the state as territorialpolitical community and a space of political action driven by the emergence of the "urban" as a dominant spatio-political imaginary.

Political efficacy and the perceived influence of urban and rural residents

“…This study also found that small towns and rural areas demonstrated lower levels of external efficacy than cities (suburban areas were indistinguishable from cities), which implies that small‐town and rural residents tend to feel that government is not responsive to their concerns. This finding is in line with similar earlier studies in Europe (see e.g., del Horno et al., 2023; Luukkonen et al., 2022). However, internal efficacy did not exhibit such a strong difference, which may mean that the urban–rural divide is linked more closely to government responsiveness than to people's own understanding of political issues.…”

“…Some scholars have explored this topic outside of American society. For example, Luukkonen and others (2022) compared European societies and found that external political efficacy is weaker in rural settings and in regions with low gross domestic products and declining populations. However, much is still unknown about this relationship especially in American political and historical contexts.…”

“…The key to this conversation is place‐based resentment in American society, whether from urban or rural residents, which provides a theoretical basis for this study. While statistical relationships between geography and political efficacy have been examined in other societies (e.g., del Horno et al., 2023; Luukkonen et al., 2022), such studies assume that rural residents' weak external efficacy is driven mostly by their feelings of being left behind and becoming losers in the globalized and knowledge‐based economies. However, this study assumes that such a decrease in political efficacy may be driven, at least in part, by the feeling that government is less responsive to an individual's in‐group than to the perceived outgroup.…”

The spatial politics of depoliticization: Visionary planning, bioeconomy, and forest capital

“…Such a development also has profound implications for the territorial political community of the state and its citizen-subjects in the sense that city-regionalist discourse delimits the space of public deliberation and legitimate public issues to specifically "urban" issues concerning the economic competitiveness of selected urban locales (Sirviö & Luukkonen 2020). In turn, this influences growing regional discontent (Dijkstra et al 2020;Larsson et al 2021;Luukkonen et al 2022;McCann 2020;Rodríguez-Pose 2018).…”