Thünen study on the geography of discontent at the conference “Unfinished Statebuilding and Contested Democracies”

Prof. Dr. Andreas Klärner, Marc Ferch and Frederik Beinvogl presented their study on the geography of discontent for discussion at the conference focusing on Eastern Europe on September 12, 2024. In a systematic literature search, they had previously evaluated a total of almost 1,200 articles from social, economic and political science journals.

This revealed that the socio-geographical analysis of political dissatisfaction is primarily limited to Western Europe and the USA and that Central and Eastern European countries have received less attention to date, although political dissatisfaction is also growing regionally there. Nevertheless, the current studies reveal the interesting finding that in these countries a relative economic disadvantage in comparison to neighboring regions (e.g. due to spatially selective EU funding instruments) seems to play a central role in the emergence of political dissatisfaction.

The study was conducted as part of the “Geography of Discontent” project led by Prof. Dr. Andreas Klärner. Czech and Polish colleagues from the related project “Social and Political Consequences of Spatial Inequalities” are also involved.

The conference was organized by the Leibniz ScienceCampus “Eastern Europe - Global Area” (EEGA) in cooperation with the Regional Studies Association (RSA). It took place from September 11 to 13, 2024 at the University of Dubrovnik (Croatia).

The congress program can be found here: https://www.leibniz-eega.de/events/conferences/2024-rsa-eega-annual-conference/programme_dubrovnik/