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Project

The Spatial Political Economy of Discontent

We live in an unequal world, where both incomes and political convictions continuously seem to diverge. On the economic front, Piketty’s publication of ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ has made it commonplace to talk about the current period as a second Belle Époque where the richest 1% appropriate an ever larger share of national income. On the political front, the post-1980 period was an era of ‘rising regionalism’ with a geographical polarization of votes, gains in populism and separatism in some regions and pluralism and cosmopolitanism in others. The World Economic Forum identifies this combination of inequality and political polarization as the biggest threat of the 21st century, as it risks “fraying the social solidarity on which the legitimacy of our economic and political systems rests”.
Although often cited as an important factor explaining the timing and location of the ‘politics of resentment’, the political frictions induced by divergent economic development remain ill understood. This project sets out to analyze the relation between the economic and political landscapes in Europe. First, it integrates theories on economic and political divergence in a spatial political economy model of discontent. Second, the model is validated by analyzing whether economic shocks gave rise to populism and separatism in Europe. Third, the model is used to analyze how political polarization affects the functioning of political and economic systems to derive policy implications.
 

Date:1 Oct 2020 →  30 Sep 2023
Keywords:Populism, separatism, comparative development, population heterogeneity, political instability
Disciplines:Urban, rural and regional economics, Mathematical methods, programming models, mathematical and simulation modelling, Political economy, Economic development, Game theory and bargaining theory