The metropolitan dimension of new cleavages: spatial polarisation of politics within major European cities

This thesis delves into the territorial dimension of new cleavages linked to the effects of globalisation. It investigates how the emergence of a “transnational cleavage”—pitting TAN (traditionalist–authoritarian-nationalist) and GAL (green–alternative-libertarian) values against each other—reshapes the metropolitan geography of voting behaviour and public opinion in contemporary Europe. While several studies have analysed how new social cleavages reshape political conflicts at national, subnational, and individual levels, the territorial-metropolitan dimension has often been overlooked. Focusing on two “least similar cases”—London and Rome—and relying on different types of data—electoral, survey, and contextual—and quantitative analyses, the thesis draws the following conclusions. First, voting behaviour and transnationalism-related (i.e. nativist and Eurosceptic) attitudes at the sub-metropolitan level have polarised after the consolidation of the transnational cleavage, over the 2010s. Indeed, support for rising GAL and TAN political parties within metropolitan areas is much more heterogeneous and polarised than that for centre-left and centre-right parties. Above all, the surge of TAN parties went hand in hand with their “suburbanisation”. Second, outskirts dwellers are clearly more Eurosceptic and nativist than residents of city centres, and these differences have intensified after the transnational cleavage arose. Finally, the thesis stresses that not only socio-demographic but also contextual factors—such as housing market dynamics and local public services—explain variations in transnationalism attitudes and party choice within metropolitan areas. Therefore, both the self-selection of “winners” and “losers” from transnationalism in different places and contextual factors associated with different metropolitan lifestyles contribute to creating a distinct metropolitan dimension of the transnational cleavage. In unveiling such metropolitan dimension, the thesis invites scholars dealing with cleavage politics and political behaviour to pay closer attention to the fine-grained urban dynamics that are becoming increasingly relevant in our ever-more urbanised world.