Brown & Mettler: Rural Politics in the US
In Rural Politics in the United States, authors Trevor E. Brown and Suzanne Mettler (both Government, Cornell University) survey recent literature on rural politics and recommend a broader lens to better understand the impact of place on voters. They discuss the current state of rural politics literature, how to measure place and rurality, and the role of public opinion. Ultimately, Brown and Mettler recommend a comparative approach for future rural studies.
In recent years, a growing partisan divide has appeared between rural and urban voters, with rural voters increasingly showing resentment towards government and urban politics. Recent literature on this divide primarily focuses on individual identity and “rural consciousness.” These studies attribute the divide to individual attitudes of anti-intellectualism, anti-black racism, anti-LGBT views, and reactions to other “hot-button” social issues. However, the authors warn against exclusively evaluating rural politics through this method and instead recommend utilizing a macro-level approach to consider the impact of institutions, public policy, and political and economic developments. This broad lens, they argue, will provide a more comprehensive understanding of how place of residence influences political identity.
The comparative approach considers, first, historical context and how it has changed over time; second, how institutional arrangements matter for rural politics; and third, how specific features of place affect politics. One of the advantages of this approach is that it accounts for variation among rural areas, which are not a “monolith.” Brown and Mettler also discuss underexplored factors contributing to the urban-rural divide. For example, economic factors like increased poverty levels, worse health outcomes, job loss, population decline, brain drain, agricultural consolidation, deregulation, and increasing reliance on public employment jobs in rural areas as compared to urban areas all are likely contributing to rural resentment and partisanship. The authors note that progressive views on social issues in urban communities are correlated with economic development, which is lagging behind in rural areas, and explore studies on race in politics, raising questions for future research.
This evaluation of recent rural politics literature considers the strides that have already been made in understanding the urban-rural divide but posits that more work needs to be done to understand place-based impacts on American voters. Most significantly, the authors posit that a broader comparative approach to rural politics scholarship allows for a deeper engagement with fundamental questions about the functioning of democracy in the United States.
This digest was written by Katelyn Rich, a 3L at the University of Nebraska College of Law, for Professor Jessica Shoemaker’s Rural Lands Seminar. Learn more about this course and other curricular offerings related to Law and Rurality in the Project’s new and growing collection of undergraduate, graduate, and law school syllabi.
