The fifth and final seminar of the 2025 Spring semester took place on 18 June (11:00 – 12:00 UK) over Zoom, with Professor Giovanni Perucca and Professor Camilla Lenzi from Politecnico di Milano, who presented “At the roots of the geography of political and life discontent”.
Access Perucca and Lenzi’s presentation here. If you missed the session you can watch the recording below or on our YouTube channel.
Abstract
The recent upsurge of populist movements, typically associated with nationalist and authoritarian views, has been the object of a rich stream of literature, aimed at understanding the determinants of this phenomenon.
In their influential study, Dijkstra et al. (2020) associated the geography of (political) discontent to the individual dissatisfaction with one’s own life and, more specifically, with the opportunities provided in the community of residence. In this perspective, populist support is interpreted as the revenge of places (and people) that don’t matter.
Despite the rich evidence on the overlapping of political and life dissatisfaction, this is not the rule. Some studies, for instance, suggested a more complex interplay between the perception of one’s own life and the personal political behavior (Lenzi and Perucca, 2021). Recent empirical evidence showed that individuals and communities satisfied with their life may support populist parties, so as dissatisfied people may oppose populism (Lenzi and Perucca, 2023).
A clear identification of the joint geography of political and life dissatisfaction is still missing. Even more importantly, the understanding of the common (and different) determinants of these two sentiments is far from being achieved.
The present paper aims at providing an overview of the geography of political and life discontent in European regions over the last two decades. Moreover, it identifies the economic, social, institutional and cultural factors under which political and life dissatisfaction do not simultaneously occur, leading to deviations from the mainstream interpretation of populist voting.
References:
Dijkstra, L., Poelman, H., & Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2020). The geography of EU discontent. Regional Studies, 54(6), 737-753.
Lenzi, C., & Perucca, G. (2021). People or places that don’t matter? Individual and contextual determinants of the geography of discontent. Economic Geography, 97(5), 415-445.
Lenzi, C., & Perucca, G. (2023). The geography of life and political discontent in UK regions. Paper presented at the 64th SIE Conference.
Biography
Camilla Lenzi is full professor of regional and urban economics at Politecnico di Milano, where she teaches courses on Artificial intelligence and socio-economic transformations, Urban economics, Economics of regional disparities. She holds a PhD in Economics (2006, Università di Pavia) and a MSc in Industry and innovation analysis (2005, SPRU – University of Sussex). From 2005 to 2008, Camilla stayed at the Department of Economics of Bocconi University and CESPRI (now CRIOS) as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. She was involved with various roles in a large number of research projects, especially at European level, financed by the Horizon programmes, Espon programme, FP7 and FP6, and the European Commission directly.
Lenzi has published on several international refereed journals such as Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Economic Geography, Regional Studies, Spatial Economic Analysis. She is Board member of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA) and Scientific Secretary of the Italian section of the Regional Science Association Internationa (AISRe). She is in the Editorial Board of Papers in Regional Science and Associate Editor of the Annals of Regional Science.
Giovanni Perucca is associate professor of regional and urban economics at Politecnico di Milano. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics (University of Milan). His research interests focus on regional inequalities, how individuals perceive them, and how this influences their behaviour. He participated in several research projects, especially at European level, (Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, Espon).
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