Urban-rural divide in global politics

Cities are, more than ever, the centre of gravity, thereby marking a shift that has bred marginalisation and resentment

Tuesday was another Election Day in the United States, and the marquee showdown was a special election in Ohio’s 12th congressional district. Aand the theme of the results was clear, no matter the winner. The district, which covers a swath of suburbs and rural areas near the state capital, Columbus, has been solidly Republican for more than three decades. It went decisively for President Donald Trump in 2016. But this year, turnout surged in suburban areas and propelled Democratic challenger Danny O’Connor to a virtual tie with his GOP opponent, Troy Balderson.

That glaring gap in enthusiasm between the more urban parts of the district and its less-populated rural areas underscored the challenge facing Trump and his party. “Republicans will need to find a way to win back suburbanites or better galvanise rural voters,” wrote the New York Times. “If they do not, their House majority will slip away.”

Dave Wasserman tweeted: “It’s hard to lose $$ betting on a widening urban/rural divide this year.”

Geography, as the saying goes, is destiny — even more so in an era of deepening political polarisation. And Trump’s America is hardly alone in this phenomenon.

When Trump went to Poland last year and delivered a speech in Warsaw’s Krasinski Square, the jubilant crowd cheering his blood-and-soil rhetoric was by and large not from the capital Warsaw. The ruling Law and Justice Party had bused in thousands of supporters from outlying parts of the country, including towns and villages along Poland’s border with Slovakia.

In Turkey, a similar dynamic has long been at work. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan counts on pious conservative voters in the Anatolian hinterland to overwhelm his secular and Leftleaning opponents, who live disproportionately in the country’s coastal cities. Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, at the helm of Europe’s nationalist vanguard, is far less popular in Budapest than elsewhere in his country. The push for Brexit and the electoral gains of the far-right in France and Germany all required the mobilisation of voters living outside major urban centres.

Politics historically shaped by the tensions

On one hand, there’s nothing particularly new about the urban-rural divide. Modern politics has been historically shaped by the tensions between the dynamism of cities and the relative stasis of the provinces, hidebound by feudalism and poverty. Town and country divisions — and the cultural enmities they foster — stretch back to antiquity.

But the inexorable urbanisation of the world means that cities are, more than ever, the centre of gravity in global politics, culture and the economy. In many democratic European societies, that shift has bred marginalisation and resentment.

“To those who have stayed in rural areas, a feeling of being left behind has replaced the pride of having grown up outside big cities and away from all the problems that are associated with them,” my colleague Rick Noack wrote following Trump’s election victory.

In the US, a major survey conducted by Pew this year found that where you live shapes how you see the world. Residents of diverse cities naturally embrace different positions than those in more homogeneous parts of the country.

In European parliamentary democracies, the segment of the population animated chiefly by anti-immigrant fears usually gets relegated to a junior seat at the table. But in America’s antiquated system of gerrymandered districts and the electoral college, less-densely populated parts of the country are favoured over denser ones — a political reality crucial to Trump’s victory.

Of course, the story can also be markedly different. The vast urban, middle-class support behind India’s right-wing nationalist Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, shows that cities aren’t always crucibles of liberalism. Rachman also points to moments when the urban middle-classes in countries like Egypt, Brazil and Thailand have backed military coups over populist democratic politics.

“It is tempting to describe cities as bastions of liberalism and the hinterlands as reactionary,” he wrote. “While that might be true when it comes to social values, there is also an incipient tendency for outvoted urbanites to sour on democracy.”