
A geographer's theory of regional inequality as a cause of revolt - blegh
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-08/how-the-places-that-don-t-matter-fueled-populism
======
paganel
The same argument has been made by Christophe Guilly, another geographer, this
time from France, starting about 3-4 years ago. From his wiki page
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Guilluy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Guilluy)):

> In France, Christophe Guilluy has got notability with his theory about la
> France périphérique (peripheral France). In his different books he stated
> that a great part of the political elite has lost contact to the popular
> classes mainly situated in rural France, which he defined as the France
> périphérique. Guilluy has also tried to explain the rise of the National
> Front in France. In the international Academia his work is currently
> unknown.[1] Guilluy has also tried to explain the vote for Trump with the
> existence of a peripheral America in an interview in the French magazine Le
> Point.[2]

I’ve just finished reading one of his books, he totally deserves to be better
known in the Anglo-Saxon world because he makes a lot of sense in what he’s
saying.

~~~
squiggleblaz
Should English speakers who are not Anglo-Saxon also read him? Or is he only
relevant in to the communities that descent largely from English settlers and
have never had to deal with the political consequences of influence from for
instance Celtic or Asian or African communities?

~~~
paganel
In these parts of Europe from where I’m from “the Anglo-Saxon world” is used
as a (apparently not so good) metaphor for the United States and Britain,
because that’s where most of the “intellectual” books written in English are
published (the big universities’ publishing houses in US + NYC,
OxBridge+London+maybe Edinburgh). It probably sucks for some people who are
from Cornwall or the Isle of Man, but in the end it’s just an expression.

------
taurath
Coming to a city from one of the depressed regions this rings true for me.
People want themselves and their communities to matter - the cold hand of
capitalism and progress hasn’t done them any favors in the last few decades.
All it takes is a drive to the (non-coastal) countryside to see. There’s a
reason voters there are more interested in being against something than for
it, and our political discourse has devolved to troll tactics and attention
grabbing on the rural right.

We may be past the point of even being able to listen and change anyone’s mind
- the solution needs to come from within the right, or a major real reworking
of the economic state to include rural prosperity somehow.

~~~
bilbo0s
I wouldn't count on any "major real reworking of the economic state".

The reality is, lots of people have been asking for just that for a long time,
and it's not come to fruition because it is an extremely difficult thing to
do.

Consider Native Americans. They wanted change for years, and essentially had
to start casinos to begin making headway. Even now, a material number of
tribes and reservations are still racked by poverty, and are unable to
participate in the vast majority of legal industrial activities at scale. The
system has not changed for them, some of them have simply been forced to find
a method of adapting to the economic system that we have.

Blacks are another example. They're a group that has agitated for change for
what seems like an eternity. It's similarly doubtful that the system will
change for them either. The ones who have found success are the ones willing
to leave their neighborhoods and participate in the larger economy not on
their own terms, but on terms set by that larger economy.

I actually would like for a new economic state to take hold that would include
people who concerned thinkers have termed "those left behind". It's just that,
given the interests embedded in the current system, I can't see how it will
change. As I pointed out, many groups have tried previously, and tried for a
very long time, yet we still have the same system in place. The best we seem
to be able to do, is to allot a few set asides for the purposes of elevating a
chosen few of "those left behind". I suspect we'll follow a similar path in
the instance of rural "left behinds". But my suspicion is that the inertia in
our system will mean that wholesale change to accommodate the majority of
"those left behind" is not likely to occur.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
It hasn't come to fruition because the people they vote for have no intention
of living up to their publicly stated goals.

~~~
taurath
Their implicit goals are “we are going to win at all costs against the other
team” and at that point they’ve succeeded enough to have a huge amount of
ongoing support.

------
yodon
> The way in which "places that don't matter" have taken their political
> revenge fits this pattern, too. They have put a premium on drawing attention
> to themselves even if it costs them.

Fascinating. That analysis sounds very much like the assessment of hostage-
taker motivations that FBI hostage negotiators have built their more modern
negotiation techniques around (see for example the book “Never Split the
Difference”). Riffing on that thought, it feels like Trump’s verbal handling
of them aligns much more closely with the FBI negotiators’ recommended
techniques than Hilary’s verbal handling of them (hers is a better fit to the
FBI’s older more intellectually focused less emotionally focused strategy that
was abandoned in the wake of the Waco disaster).

------
mxfh
My pet theory is, that it's all about the exposure to the realities of other
people in daily life, not through warped representations in the media.
Population density correlates well with political preferences[1]. That regions
don't need to be forgotten shows the example of wealthy Austria, where the FPÖ
gets majorities anywhere not densely urban. I would put the threshold
somewhere around 1000 to 5000 people/km².

Also rich gated or very segregated neighborhoods, where people are rarely step
out side their homogenous envirements or cars fall under this extrapolation of
the _contact hypothesis_ in relation to suspectability to populism for me.

[1] [https://medium.com/@davetroy/is-population-density-the-
key-t...](https://medium.com/@davetroy/is-population-density-the-key-to-
understanding-voting-behavior-191acc302a2b)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_hypothesis)

------
temp-dude-87844
Over time, those that are able to move to areas of growth do so, leaving those
who didn't leave behind.

This movement of people ensures that the urban-rural divide, as well as the
growth-stagnation divide will persist, because the working definitions will
naturally fit around the current facts on the ground.

This is neither a new phenomenon, nor freshly articulated. For example, much
of Thomas Jefferson's political career was devoted to addressing issues of the
urban-rural divide in the early United States.

~~~
thriftwy
> Over time, those that are able to move to areas of growth do so, leaving
> those who didn't leave behind.

> This movement of people ensures that the urban-rural divide, as well as the
> growth-stagnation divide will persist

Counterexamples are Sweden and Norway. A century ago they were stagnation
areas with people moving away. Today they're more affluent than areas they
were losing population to.

The tide can change.

------
aaron-lebo
[http://www.pbs.org/video/the-gilded-age-
nun3cr/](http://www.pbs.org/video/the-gilded-age-nun3cr/)

Good watch which talks about rural populism in the 1800s quite a bit.

------
theandrewbailey
HN title is incorrect. Should be:

How the 'Places That Don't Matter' Fueled Populism

~~~
dang
We changed it to a shortened version of the subtitle in keeping with the HN
guideline "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
linkbait." The article title was arguably a bit baity—on the edge, admittedly,
but threads are sensitive to initial conditions and the title is the biggest
initial condition.

------
gowld
George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi might disagree that this is a "new"
theory.

------
rpearl
The thing is (at least in the US), it's not the case that these places "don't
matter". In fact, they matter disproportionately _more_. Living in a populous
state, say CA as the most popular, costs voters power.

A CA electoral college delegate represents the will of ~710,000 voters. A WY
delegate represents the will of only ~200,000 voters, so a vote in WY counts
more than 3x as much as a vote in CA. (For much the same reason, congress also
sees disproportionate representation of smaller states, since the number of
senators is fixed.)

Not to mention gerrymandering results in outsized influence of rural/urban
boundaries as well.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
In the sense of strict voting power of course, that's the point of our
government setup, a minimization of the influence of 'centers of power.' But
rural voters feel alienated from the actual politicians they're able to pick.
Take a look at all the top Republicans and Democrats, the ones who are in the
news. What has any of them done to help revitalize rural areas? Trump is the
only one I can think of that has promised some effort to the problem and even
he isn't going to follow through except for a few token, small measures.
'Political elites' don't actually do anything for rural voters despite rural
voting power. Hence the breakdown in those areas.

~~~
bilbo0s
"...But rural voters feel alienated from the actual politicians they're able
to pick. Take a look at all the top Republicans and Democrats, the ones who
are in the news. What has any of them done to help revitalize rural areas?..."

That's a complaint which is not particular to rural voters though right? The
same can be said of the impoverished urban masses gripped by hopelessness and
drug activity. Or the impoverished suburban masses gripped by hopelessness and
an opioid epidemic.

Many voters all over the US "... feel alienated from the actual politicians
they're able to pick..."

Closing the chasm between leaders and those being led is an age old problem.
It's a problem that was likely present in every great civilization.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Yes but cities and suburbs aren't degrading in the ways that rural areas are.
I agree that most americans probably sense a divide between their own values
and those of the 'political class' but if there's still job opportunity and
people are still moving in and home values are still appreciating then they
just deal with it. In rural areas though, the jobs are disappearing and people
are moving away, entire towns just fading out of existence. They _need_ a
politician to step in

~~~
squiggleblaz
Everyone in the US will be a lot better off if they just doubled the size of
the House. Then there would be a lot more people looking for a lot more jobs.
Congress members would begin to represent areas that are only inhumanly large
instead of areas that are monstrously large. This benefits rural residents
most clearly.

And the democratic principle would be more perfectly approached: At the
moment, there's 436 democratically allocated seats in presidential elections,
versus 102 non-democratically allocated seats. With a doubled congress, it
would be more like 872 give-or-take versus 102 (the exact number will depend
on how many congress seats Wyoming earns, as this affects the number of
college seats DC receives). This benefits urban residents most clearly.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>Everyone in the US will be a lot better off if they just doubled the size of
the House.

>This benefits urban residents most clearly.

Yeah it benefits urban residents at the expense of rural residents. There's no
way you can claim it would make everyone better off, it reduces rural voting
power in presidential elections.

------
jstewartmobile
Title should be "Geographer claims _old_ theory of regional inequality as his
own".

~~~
dang
OK, we've taken 'new' out of the title above.

------
HumanDrivenDev
This article absolutely drips with arrogance and unconscious bias. It even
mentions allocating "blame"!

TL;DR: People from unimportant areas who don't vote correctly are merely
vengeful simpletons having knee-jerk reactions. This is the reason we
enlightened people from coastal US cities have been thwarted.

~~~
dang
Please don't post rants on divisive topics. That's one reason the site
guidelines include this: "Please respond to the strongest plausible
interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
criticize."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

