Rural representation in Europe : the presence of place in national parliaments
Rico, Guillem (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Ciència Política i de Dret Públic)
García Del Horno, Rubén (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Ciència Política i de Dret Públic)
Hernández, Enrique (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Ciència Política i de Dret Públic)

Data:	2025
Resum:	BERTA REVISAR // LES CC I ELS FUNDINGS AL FINAL DEL DOCUMENT.
Resum:	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.
Ajuts:	European Commission 822166 Agencia Estatal de Investigación PCI2020-111990 Generalitat de Catalunya PRE111/21/000004
Nota:	Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UAB
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Publicat a:	Electoral studies, Vol. 96 (august 2025) , p. 102962, ISSN 1873-6890

DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102962

13 p, 4.3 MB

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