Rural representation in Europe: The presence of place in national parliaments

Abstract

Recent research shows a growing rural-urban divide in political attitudes and behavior, which has given currency to expressions like “places that don't matter” and “rural resentment”. Although these accounts point to a crisis of political representation, the topic has hardly been approached from the theories and methods of the unequal representation literature. Against this backdrop, this paper provides a systematic assessment of biases in place-related descriptive representation in 28 European countries. Using data on legislator biographies and geographic and demographic statistics, we first examine the relative presence of legislators with urban and rural backgrounds in national parliaments, and then assess the extent to which parliamentary composition, in terms of members' birthplaces, reflects the broader demographic makeup of country populations. Next, we explore how variation in the territorial background of legislators relates to country, party, and individual-level factors. Results show that rural areas tend to be underrepresented in national parliaments when compared to urban ones. Differences in the descriptive representation of rural areas vary in consistent ways with urbanization levels, electoral system features, parties' characteristic constituencies, territorial embeddedness and ideological orientation, and legislator sociodemographics. The study's results underscore the need for greater scholarly attention to the representation of place—particularly rural areas—to better understand its potential consequences on symbolic marginalization, feelings of exclusion, and a lack of policies addressing their needs, all of which may fuel political polarization and distrust in democratic institutions.