Party Systems and Urban-Rural Polarization

• In Event: Urban-Rural Divides in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

If elections are contested and governing coalitions are built along multiple dimensions of conflict, and preferences on one of those dimensions demonstrates a relatively low correlation with population density, a multi-party system can encourage geographically heterogeneous governing coalitions, and thus relieve the pressure toward an over-arching urban-rural conflict that has emerged in majoritarian democracies in recent decades. We distinguish between the extent to which urban and rural inhabitants vote for different political parties or candidates (urban-rural electoral polarization) and the degree of urban-rural polarization in support for the party or parties that form the government (urban-rural polarization in government formation). We build a large cross-national dataset for OECD countries since the 1970s, and document the evolution of both forms of urban-rural polarization. Urban-rural electoral polarization has been on the rise in many countries as non-economic issues have become salient over time. However, the key finding of the paper is that the growth of electoral polarization translates directly into polarization in government formation only in majoritarian systems with few parties. Governments in multi-party democracies typically include either parties with diverse geographic support bases, coalitions of urban and rural parties, or both.

Authors

• Twan Huijsmans, University of Amsterdam

• Jonathan Rodden, Stanford University