Regional Economic Distress and Political Participation in National and European Parliamentary Elections in Western Europe

This paper examines the relationship between regional or 'contextual' poverty, income inequality and unemployment and individual political participation in the mid-1990s for the following Western European countries: Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. This research is based on the notion that there are 'concentration effects' of poverty and unemployment that negatively affect the regional networks and structures facilitating individual political and economic participation (see Wilson, 1987; Cohen and Dawson, 1993). In exploring this connection, I construct regi... Mehr ...