The farmers' protests sweeping across Europe during the early month of 2024 have highlighted the discontent felt by many residing in rural areas. Protests have been motivated by increasing input costs, falling prices of agricultural produce and more stringent regulations. In this paper, we go beyond the economic rationale for the protests and ask what broader sociological factors could be driving rural discontent. To this aim, we investigate political ‘recognition gaps’ between rural residents and their urban counterparts – that is, the differences in the degree to which people feel respected and recognised by their governments. Using data collected in the spring of 2022 across the 27 Member States of the European Union, we document that a sizeable proportion of the sample perceive a lack of fair treatment and respect from their governments. Notably, these gaps in perceived respect are significantly larger in rural compared to urban areas. The differences in perceived recognition between rural and urban areas hold even after controlling for a wide range of sociodemographic characteristics, showing that it is not just differences in the observable characteristics between rural and urban residents that are driving these different levels of perceived recognition.
Policy Implications
- The growing divide between Europe's rural and urban areas is becoming an increasing threat to political trust and social cohesion.
- Inequalities in living conditions and sentiments of not being recognised or valued may be one of the explanations behind the rise of populist movements in Europe.
- Politicians and decision-makers must urgently deploy place-based policies that ensure the provision of high-quality public services to improve living conditions in rural areas and ensure that rural residents feel valued.
- Opportunities for education, training and employment of young people in rural areas should be provided through the implementation of the reinforced Youth Guarantee.
- Investments such as these would help achieve the goal of geographically balanced economic growth as set out in the Lisbon Treaty that established the legal framework of the European Union and made territorial cohesion the third articulated dimension of European cohesion policy.
- Such investments could also signal to rural communities their importance in terms of overall European economic and social development.
Photo by Ieva Brinkmane