Keywords

Processes of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation shaped by numerous socio-economic and cultural institutional challenges disrupt stability in contemporary territorial spaces, including those of territorial states. Therefore, there is a temptation to get rid of any reference to the territory as a dimension heuristically capable of grasping contemporary political events and processes. This also applies to voting behaviour, which is the main way in which citizens support political parties and contribute to selecting political elites. An influential and heterogeneous current of political scientists asserts that voting practices do not (or no longer) depend on territorial roots. Rational choice theories argue there is no heuristic interest in connecting individual rationality and spatiality. For those who prioritise audience democracy, the importance of national traditional media coverage and social media networking has led to a decline in the relevance of places and local ties. Thus, voting preferences could be studied either through individual cost–benefit calculations or only through socio-professional or cultural conditions that are independent of the places and environments where people live. This is especially true given that nowadays, voting practices marked by greater changes in ideological-political orientations and high (albeit variable) levels of abstentionism seem less taken for granted than they did a few decades ago, at least in major European democracies.

Mainstream electoral studies have challenged some territory-oriented traditions of research that were influential in the twentieth century: The first tradition, rooted in the ecological paradigm founded by André Siegfried (1913) in France and Edward Kriebel in the UK (1916), sought to explain voting behaviour through the influence of geographical features related to demographic, economic, cultural, social or institutional aspects; the second developed from research on the “neighbouring effects” and “interpersonal influence” on voting behaviour, highlighting “communitarian” belonging and local ties in political geography, sociology and political science (Fitzgerald, 2018; Johnson, 1986; Zuckerman, 2005); the third tradition centred on the study of political cleavages and the works of political scientist Stein Rokkan in the 1950s and 1960s.

However, one might wonder whether these academic legacies have really lost their heuristic capacities. Recently, there have been notable attempts to renew territorial voting analysis, especially in Europe and other Western democracies. This chapter aims to show how the attention to territorial voting is part of marginal but important analytical approaches, in particular through the legacy of the cleavage theory and the renewal of geographic analysis, which stresses the impact of uneven economic development. In the first part of the chapter, we will discuss the limits and strengths of the cleavage theory in contemporary democracies. Next, we consider some examples of rising territorial divides in European and US politics. And finally, we explore the persistent relevance of territorial divides by highlighting their multifaceted features.

Old and Territorial Cleavages

The sociological and political scientist legacy of Norwegian scholar Stein Rokkan and his successors examined the relevance of political cleavages for understanding how social and cultural conflicts develop into opposing political alignments and translate into party systems. In modern European democracies, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, political cleavages tended to be based on strong historical turning points, such as the Industrial Revolution or the separation of church and state, with the associated consolidation of antagonistic social, cultural, religious and other groups. These groups, which had stable identities, could under certain conditions ensure loyalty to a party or an ideological-political alignment. They were also able to interpret the interests represented by this cleavage within party systems. One of the best-known outcomes of this line of research is the crystallisation of political cleavages for a significant period of the twentieth century in West European party systems (Lipset & Rokkan, 1967). Rokkan distinguished two main territorial cleavages: The first was between the centre and the periphery, i.e. the contrasts that could arise between the nation-building centre and the ethnically, religiously or linguistically distinct territories within the perimeter of the state, which were subjugated to the centre; and the second related to the tensions produced by the Industrial Revolution between the urban industrial and commercial classes located in large agglomerations and the interests of the peasantry, that is, citizens engaged in agricultural production and located in rural places (Rokkan & Flora, 2007). In the recent decades, a large set of studies have shown a gradual refreezing of the traditional cleavages at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although not everywhere, wage-earners and religious groups tend to loom less prominently in support of socialist parties and parties of the Christian tradition, respectively (Brooks et al., 2006; Best, 2011). In the 1950s and 1960s, Stein Rokkan argued that established European democratic regimes have fixed territorial cleavages, except for internal minorities and peripheries (Rokkan & Flora, 2007). Since 1970, an important stream of literature has emphasised the persistent although changing meaning of centre–periphery cleavages in relation to the rise of regionalist and minority nationalist parties in some European regions such as Catalonia, Scotland or Northern Italy (e.g. Gomez-Reino, 2018; Hepburn, 2009; Swenden & Bolleyer, 2014).

However, some empirical evidence seems to confirm the ongoing political relevance of territorial divides in Western democracies also where there are no regionalist parties. For instance, the French party system, which has undergone major transformations in recent years, offers an interesting example of these trends. While some traditional religious and social cleavages have weakened or transformed, along with the breakdown of the old parties and the rise of new ones, territorial divides seem to be taking on new significance. In France, the 2017 presidential election represented a turning point of the Fifth Republic from the point of view of the party system. After decades, the mainstream right-wing parties and the Socialist Party were excluded from the second round for the first time ever, and both came out as losers in the legislative elections as well (Evans & Ivaldi, 2018). Although in previous decades persistent territorial divides have been characterised voting behaviour, the most recent the geography of the vote, connected to new parties and socio-economic transformations, stressed significant variation between and within urban and rural areas (Batardy et al., 2017; Bussi et al., 2012). In 2017, support for Macron was around 20% in small municipalities (in those with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants it was 18.5%), while it rose to 35% in Paris. On the other hand, the vote for Marine Le Pen was close to 27% in small towns with fewer than 1,000 voters, fell to 15% in medium-large cities and almost disappeared in Paris, where she obtained around 5% of the vote (Emanuele, 2018). In Paris, voters in working-class neighbourhoods, old bastions of the left—in particular, the communist left—primarily supported the candidate of the radical left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon; the more affluent voters, who exercise highly qualified professions and live in the capital’s central districts, where the PS had scored well in the past, voted mostly for Emmanuel Macron in 2017. By contrast, the lower level of support for Le Pen in the capital was mainly concentrated in the working-class areas of the banlieues. In the 2019 European elections, the Rassemblement National was confirmed as the largest French party, just as it had been four years earlier. The party En marche, founded by Macron, came in second place. The results of European elections showed similar territorial patterns to those of the presidential election. Marine Le Pen’s party reconfirmed its territorial bastions in the old industrial areas of the North and East, as well as the Mediterranean basin, particularly in the regions of Provence-Alpes, the Côte d’Azur and Languedoc-Roussillon. The 2022 Presidential elections have partially confirmed the previous trends. In the first round, the support for Jean-Luc Mélenchon was carried by dense urban areas also clearly in rural areas, the vote for Marine Le Pen was higher outside the major urban centres, while Macron’s electoral results did not seem to depend on where people live. In the second round, the territorial divide appears more clearly: The votes for the radical right are clearly reinforced outside urban centres and peak in rural areas. The opposite is true for the electoral coalition led by Emmanuel Macron in the second round, which is weaker in rural areas than in the major urban centres (Brookes & Guerra, 2023).

In the United States, the 2016 presidential election marked a clear breaking point in recent political history. The unexpected victory of outsider Trump was due not only to his role as an anti-establishment showman but also to his performance as spokesman for an agenda and programme that had been widely disseminated by the Tea Party, the opinion movement that had transformed the Republican Party from within since 2010, but also by the many movements nostalgic for white supremacy, as well as the network of conservative evangelical churches. Trump’s candidacy also exacerbated more or less latent territorial rifts around him. Trump’s 2016 America First campaign targeted the white working class and middle class, appealed to their fears and frustrations, focused on the Democrats’ broken promises and leveraged sensitive topics such as the economic decline of the world’s leading power and migration flows (Lamont et al., 2017). The 2016 election consolidated a rift between two North Americas on a national scale: one consisting of the large metropolitan regions, primarily on the East and West coasts; and the other comprising small towns and rural areas. This divide had not previously been as politically strong as in the 2016 election. Residents of large urban centres and surrounding conurbations, as well as those of smaller urban areas, were the most likely to identify with and vote for the Democratic Party. By contrast, the less populous and less diverse suburbs of small metropolitan areas, the outlying areas of major cities, as well as rural counties, tended to support the Republicans (Scala & Johnson, 2017).

While the former have concentrated wealth and economic dynamism and have been global hubs of the financial and technological revolutions for decades, the latter have struggled under the burden of economic stagnation and social decline. Politicising widespread divisions in public opinion, especially in Midwestern states with strong ties to manufacturing, and where the white working-class vote was crucial, especially in the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin (Morgan & Lee, 2018), helped Trump to secure his 2016 victory (Abramowitz & McCoy, 2019). In 2020, after four years of increasing polarisation and an agenda marked by the issues of immigration, border closures, protectionism and criticism of the Washington bureaucracy, which Trump used to cultivate an image of himself as an outsider, the presidency went to challenger Joe Biden. Biden won mainly, but not exclusively, in metropolitan areas. Trump’s defeat, which he would refuse to recognise, once again handed him the votes of the rural and less urbanised areas of the country, as well as a white vote tempted by racial segregation and a nationalist conservatism that has become dominant in the Republican Party under Trump’s influence. In fact, the party of Abraham Lincoln now aligns more closely with parties like the Alternative für Deutschland or Marie Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France.

It would be incomplete to consider territorial voting only as it is expressed in elections. If we move from elections to a referendum, specifically, the one held in the United Kingdom in 2016 to leave the European Union, we find similar territorial divides. The Brexit referendum was undoubtedly a watershed moment in European history, not least because in 2021, the EU would wind up losing one of its member states for the first time in its history. Analyses have shown how the Brexit vote was a litmus test of deep socio-territorial divides within and across the UK. It was often emphasised that those who voted to leave were mainly those with low incomes, who were unemployed or had manual and low-skilled jobs or who felt their financial situation had worsened because of European integration. Level of education also played a crucial role: Those with a high level of education were more in favour of the status quo, while those with a medium–low education voted in favour of leaving the EU. Voting depended on personal characteristics but also divided voters according to their place of residence. On the one hand, urban areas that enjoyed favourable positions on an international scale—in short, that seized the opportunities of economic globalisation—and affluent localities where a highly educated and diverse population was concentrated opposed Brexit (e.g. in Edinburgh, Cambridge, Oxford and Richmond). On the other hand, areas that were sparsely urbanised or in industrial decline saw some of the highest peaks in support of Brexit.

The vote for Brexit highlights the impact of the inequality of development and opportunity between the different regions that make up the United Kingdom, as well as within regions, between large cities, smaller towns and more remote areas (e.g. Goodwin & Heath, 2016). Voters are not only oriented based on their personal characteristics such as their level of education but also influenced by the conditions of the environment in which they live. People with high levels of professional qualifications were more likely to vote in favour of Brexit when they resided in areas with a low concentration of qualified people. In areas where a low-skilled economy was concentrated, the difference in support for Brexit between graduates and non-graduates was 20 points; by contrast, in the most dynamic areas, this difference was more than 40 points.

Multiple Territorial Divides

To some extent, the transformation of party systems in many Western countries and the renewed political relevance of territorial divides in party competition reflects the impact of restructuring territorial states and the emergence of oppositions to globalisation, migrations and supranational integration (e.g. Hooge & Marks, 2017). Whether the relevance of some old political cleavages seems to have faded, the focus has shifted to the emergence of new ones triggered by lifestyle changes (e.g. between materialist and post-materialist values) and socio-economic challenges, which are linked to the processes of denationalisation and globalisation of the economy (Kriesi et al., 2006), multi-level governance, urbanisation processes and shifting relations between the centre and the periphery within and across state borders (Ford & Jennings, 2020; Rodden, 2019). While devolution and decentralisation and multi-layered forms of party mobilisation around local and regional elections open new opportunities for territorially framing cultural and socio-economic issues (Keating, 2013), urban and socio-economic transformations tend to shape new territorial divides.

Undoubtedly, in the past few decades, many structural changes have occurred, such as the decline of old industrial sectors and growing secularisation (at least in Western Europe), as well as the restructuration of territorial state, which have had consequences in terms of political socialisation and the formation of political opinion. The Brexit vote highlights the impact of economic globalisation on wealth disparities between regions in the UK. Controlling for age, gender and education factors, people living in areas that have seen greater penetration of Chinese imports in recent years are more likely to support the UK’s exit from the EU (Colantone & Stanig, 2018). Similarly, financial and digital capitalism has contributed to a growing territorial divide between global cities that attract skills and investment from all over the world and less densely populated and rural regions, which were once centres of manufacturing but are now cut off from new global dynamics. Silicon Valley and Wall Street no longer depend on the supply of material goods from the Midwest regions but have increasingly tapped into foreign manufacturing and financial chains from Europe, the Middle East, China and the rest of Asia.

Nevertheless, it is not always clear to what extent and how such an urban–rural divide still shapes enduring political cleavages. For instance, a recent comparative research, focused on 30 European countries between 2002 and 2018 and combining aggregate and individual variables, provides evidence that the urban divide still matters. Meanwhile, outputs do not show a clear-cut opposition between urban and rural spaces but a gradient: “the clear gradient that we identify in terms of political attitudes and social values, and their correlation with different spatial scales and kinds of community—ranging from metropolitan centres at one end of the spectrum through to more remote, rural areas at the other—suggest the need for a more detailed and contextual understanding” (Kenny & Luca, 2021: 578).

Accordingly, electoral studies tend to confirm in regions that have benefitted the most from the opportunities of globalisation, inequalities in terms of educational resources have played a much larger role than in the less dynamic territories, thus highlighting the effect of the territorial context on voting orientations. A recent study in 63,000 constituencies across EU countries also confirms that support for Eurosceptic parties is mainly the result of the economic and industrial decline in combination with lower employment and a less educated workforce (Dijkstra et al., 2020; Rodríguez-Pose, 2020). These results confirm the increasing impact of the so-called left-behind territories embedded in the critical consequences of global transformations (e.g. Hendrickson et al., 2018; McKay, 2019).

Urbanisation has transformed the relationship between the inner city, suburbs and the countryside and contributed to polarising opportunities across territorial spaces. The financialisation and digitalisation of the economy have challenged the sectors and places of traditional industrial production, enhancing anxieties and inequalities. In this uncertain context, unfulfilled expectations of the political system and its representatives arise, as well as social protests against the economic elites, who are often identified, rightly or wrongly, with the urban centres and financial powers (Guilluy, 2019). The less urbanised and old industrial territories are particularly invested with narratives stressing their status as victims, as areas on the margins, little recognised, and thus of a politicisation that results in polarised orientations compared with those expressed in more central, successful and global-oriented territories.

Structural approaches to territorial cleavages do not take into account how territorial issues have been subjectively appropriated. As globalisation and state restructuring contribute to reshaping territorial divides in a multi-scalar environment, many divides take multifaceted forms of demand for social and territorial justice. According to this interpretation, voters who have benefitted less from the advantages of globalisation and reside in territories that are less dynamic than the large metropolitan urban centres use their votes to express their dissatisfaction with a development model that penalises them (Naumann & Fischer-Tahir, 2013). While their limited educational or professional qualifications put them at a disadvantage in the global economy, this disadvantage also depends on the fact that the areas in which they live offer them fewer economic opportunities. Voting is not solely driven by inequality in terms of economic development, material wealth or educational resources. An important strand of electoral studies, drawing on sociological approaches to voting behaviour, demonstrates the persistent relevance of the places in which people live, inhabit, socialise and form their political opinions (e.g. Broz et al., 2021; Fitzgerald, 2018; Milner, 2021; Waldron, 2021). For instance, a recent comparative research conducted in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands shows that living in a rural or urban area counts for little on its own to explain voting for protest parties; instead, a sharper perception of the deterioration of the surrounding environment in which they live has a much bigger impact on these voters (Evans et al., 2019).

At the same time, in the politicisation of territorial divides, anti-establishment stances embodied by oppositional and anti-system actors play a crucial role. What is at stake is the contrast between who is supposed to belong to the “territory” and who is alienated from it or opposed to its interests. Such elites are identified as those opposed to the territory and its inhabitants. In this sense, we could say that the driving force behind territorial cleavages is a political response against the rebellion of the elites described a few years ago by historian and essayist Christopher Lasch (1996). According to him, the malaise of contemporary democracies is rooted in the elites’ secession from the community. An anthropological study carried out in Wisconsin, one of the most contested states between Democrats and Republicans in recent presidential elections (with 0.63% in favour of Biden in 2020 and 0.77% in favour of Trump in 2016), provides a timely illustration of this. Conducted during the Obama presidency, the study highlights the resentment of the wealthy classes and local political actors in small towns, who accuse the national government elites of aligning with “global elites” and favouring metropolitan areas and the interests of urban liberal voters (Cramer, 2016).

Thus, the emergence and consolidation of the opposition between town and country, between urban and rural, and between the centre and the periphery imply a social construction of territorial ties (e.g. Scala & Johnson, 2017). This approach does not assume contrasting and stable territorial spaces (geographical, institutional or demographic) but rather sees territorial divides taking different forms and gradients that depend on strategies and appropriations. In this way, one could, for example, highlight how contrast can take the form of a divide between rural and urban, between the inner city, suburbs and the countryside (Van Gent et al., 2014), or between the centre and the periphery, where uneven socio-economic development is combined with citizens expressing “strong place-based identities” (de Lange et al., 2022). The contrast might occur within the perimeter of the territorial state or across it and involve supranational dynamics and the global economic network. The assumption is that, in the global age, no areas have a peripheral or rural nature that, as such, expresses territorial cleavages. Rather, there are more or less authentic and self-sufficient social groups and political actors who live in a specific place and struggle or protest in the name of defending their way of life and material conditions when they feel threatened.

Rethinking Territorial Voting

According to electoral studies, some traditional identities on which political cleavages in Western European democracies were based seem to be in decline. As a consequence, some classic sociological approaches, such as cleavage theories that refer to territorial ties, have been challenged and often marginalised. However, as we have seen in this chapter, the relevance of territorial divides has not been weakened by recent changes. In contemporary democracies, not only in Western Europe, we are witnessing a phase of dissolution but also of persistence and reconstruction of territorial linkages that have relevance in electoral arenas. As territorial divides and belongings continue to shape contemporary voting behaviour. As underlined by a rising literature, it seems indisputable that territorial divides persist or re-emerge in new politicised forms. Citizens develop bonds with the territories in which they live, share material interests and emotional ties and get political orientations:

Place of birth and the context where individuals spend their ‘impressionable years’—that is the period of late adolescence and early adulthood during which people form durable political attitudes have a significant influence… Even in some of the most dynamic and developed economies in the world, it appears that where you are born and grow up is one of the most important facts about the life of any citizen. (Kenny & Luca, 2021: 578)

There is empirical evidence that territories continue to play a crucial role in defining political conflict. Recent electoral evolutions, political mobilisations and changing party systems are characterised by specific spatial divides that differ in economic strength, population density and proximity or distance from city centres. The experiences of an old metal worker and an unemployed young man living in an economically prosperous urban centre or, conversely, a de-industrialised peri-urban area are not the same.

The decline, ideological shift or dissolution of political parties that have long shaped a particular cleavage tend to weaken but not necessarily neutralise it. While old cleavages become less relevant, as groups of voters who until recently loyally supported the party or line-up feel disoriented, lose confidence and sometimes take refuge in abstentionism, political cleavages manifest themselves in the interaction between demands from citizens and political actors, which favour the dissemination of an ideological message that politicises social conflict. In a global age, where old agrarian parties no longer exist or are very marginal, new territorial divides have formed between spaces under new political cleavages. Territorial divides can be transformed and take on new meanings as new actors emerge. Unlike rural or agrarian parties, today’s regionalist and nationalist parties, especially those with anti-establishment stances, interpreted territorial divides, between the centre and the periphery or between urban and rural areas. New political formations—especially anti-establishment and anti-system parties—that can intercept the demands of a part of society can mould new territorial divides that are decisive for understanding democratic evolution and attract a part of the electorate traditionally linked to mainstream parties. Groups of citizens and voters seem to share feelings of exclusion, loss and betrayal, which under certain conditions can turn into anti-establishment voting. To understand territorial divides, it is necessary to consider the interpersonal and emotional approach to voting analysis, including communitarian belonging, solidarity and feelings of discrimination (Förtner et al., 2021).

At the same time, there is no single way in which territorial spaces influence voting behaviour and politicise into a territorial divide. Multi-level governance and rescaling political competition also shape how territorial divides are displayed. Individuals and groups appropriate messages of contestation concerning the places they live, live and work, which in turn are articulated at different territorial scales. Different kinds of places and different groups of citizens (with more or less strong territorial ties) can be invested by territorialisation strategies, that is, the conditions that facilitate the emergence and consolidation of territorial divides capable of structuring, at least in part, political competition in contemporary democracies. Complex urbanisation processes and socio-economic dynamics reflect divisions and inequalities that are politicised in various ways, depending on the opportunities and legacies in which political competition occurs. This happens in a locally situated way but also in relation to the global transformations that have marked the evolution of capitalism in recent decades, with their profound influence on the social and cultural dynamics of the world’s most remote and peripheral locations.

Recent advances in territory-oriented voting analysis suggest several important questions for the research agenda. First of all, it would be valuable to further explore the contextual effects of place on different groups of citizens, in particular how and when the “imprinting” in terms of territorial socialisation shapes political loyalties throughout different phases of life; second, it seems crucial to untangle the effects of cleavage attitudes and territorial cleavages by using more sophisticated indicators of territorial belonging; third, the role of emotional territorial belonging matters in shaping political orientations should be given more serious consideration; and fourth, more comparative research should be conducted to understand how different kinds of symbolic appropriations of territorial spaces, particularly inner cities, suburbs and the countryside, shape territorial cleavage in different ways in times of transnational changes.