Unequal Political Representation of Core and Periphery: How Regions That Don’t Matter Vote for Parties That Don’t Bother

Abstract

While many democracies face a ‘geography of discontent’, it is still largely unknown to what extent peripheral regions are underrepresented indeed. This paper analyses the spatial orientation of Dutch political parties and their Members of Parliament (MPs) obtained through counting the geographical toponyms mentioned in their parliamentary questions (2017–2021). Dutch Right-wing, Liberal, and Conservative parties focus disproportionately more on larger cities and the Randstad metropolitan core region. In contrast, Socialist, Social-Democrat, and Christian Democratic parties focus more on the periphery and smaller places. MPs originating in the Randstad pay substantially less attention to the periphery than MPs from the periphery. In contrast, all MPs pay substantial attention to the Randstad. Some MPs from the periphery compensate by acting as regional ambassadors. We found a ‘regional attention paradox’: peripheral regions that feel underrepresented vote for political parties that pay less attention to the periphery while ignoring political parties that are more periphery-oriented.