Why big cities will ultimately prevail

The growing divide between urbanites and rural residents is shaping politics everywhere, from Brexit to the rise of Donald Trump. Last Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received a mandate for more personalised rule from most of his country, but not from its big cities. Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir are responsible for about 46 per cent of Turkey’s economic output and just 23 per cent of its population. All three cities voted against the perpetuation of Erdogan’s emergency powers, which made Turkey a strong presidential republic. Like U.S. presidents, Erdogan will be able to form cabinets and nominate top judges while remaining a member of a political party.
 
The powerless anger at being outvoted by provincials is familiar to people in U.S. big cities. After voting overwhelmingly against Trump last November, they took to the streets to protest — just as many residents of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir did late on Sunday night. The same story is unfolding in Warsaw (which voted against the nationalist PiS party in 2015) and London (which voted against Brexit). If Marine Le Pen loses the upcoming French presidential election, France will join the club of countries where big cities’ choices prevail. That happened in the Austrian presidential election in 2016 and in the Dutch parliamentary one last month: Liberal candidates preferred by urbanites defeated nationalists with stronger provincial support bases.
 
Even in countries with authoritarian regimes firmly in place, big cities are relatively unhappy with them. Moscow has consistently delivered some of Vladimir Putin’s worst electoral results. Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party won everywhere in 2014, but it barely eked out a plurality in Budapest.
 
The urban-rural divide is often attributed to globalisation’s winners living in cities while its losers decline outside of them. That’s somewhat simplistic. Erdogan, the former mayor of Istanbul, had never lost an election there, but Turkey’s business capital rejected his constitutional changes by 51.4 per cent of the vote. Brexiteers aren’t opposed to globalization or free trade; otherwise they wouldn’t be so enamored with Singapore’s example. Putin, Orban and PiS ideologue Jaroslaw Kaczynski aren’t isolationists, either. The gap between the big cities and the heartland, which exists in most countries, isn’t just about globalization and its spoils. It’s also about two different kinds of communal identity that are increasingly difficult to reconcile within polities.
 
One is the traditional nation-state patriotism. A political language exists in every country to appeal to it, and those politicians who speak it more convincingly win the rural vote, be it in the U.S. or in Turkey. It’s the language of military strength, adherence to tradition, often the yearning for a past golden age.
 
Strict religious rules and local customs are often relaxed to accommodate diversity and reduce tension among neighbors. Besides, the competitiveness of coexisting with millions of others at close quarters makes big city dwellers likely to question authority and tradition.
 
The problem with appealing to the city dwellers is that many electoral systems are tilted against them. The U.S. electoral college, which gives a disproportionate voice to smaller states, is a vivid example. And politicians who win with rural audiences do their best to strengthen their geographic advantage. The PiS now seeks to expand Warsaw’s electoral boundaries, adding 32 surrounding communities to the city so it could seize control of the capital’s city council in the next election.

@Bloomberg