Cosmopolitan cities against nationalist hinterlands? A conjoint experiment on the urban-rural divide in political preferences of Europeans

Over the last decade, cleavage structures in Europe have changed considerably. With the traditional left-right dimension coming under pressure, political competition is increasingly structured by conflicts over cosmopolitanism. As part of this transformation, several studies have argued that this cosmopolitan-nationalist divide overlaps with a geographical cleavage pitting cosmopolitan cities against a nationalist countryside. However, despite this burgeoning literature on the urban-rural divide, important gaps remain. First, it is still unclear on which policy dimensions this cleavage precisely loads. Although existing works point towards issues such as migration and European integration, we do not know to which extent public opinion on these issues is structured by the urban-rural divide. Second, while many studies argue that urban-rural polarization has become a dominant feature of European politics, the relative strength of this division regarding other cleavages remains open. Responding to these shortcomings, this paper employs a conjoint experiment in five European countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) measuring policy preferences on issues regarding redistribution, migration, gay rights, climate change, and European integration. Relying on subgroup analysis the paper then shows how policy preferences along these dimensions are structured by the urban-rural divide and compares this to educational, ethnic and ideological cleavages.