Long-Term Decline of Regions and the Rise of Populism: The Case of Germany

The HSE-FUB online workshop series "Varieties of Populism in East and West" continued on December 6th. The theme of the third workshop was "Long-Term Decline of Regions and the Rise of Populism: The Case of Germany".

The guest speaker was Dr. Maria Greve, Postdoctoral fellow at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) and Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands).

Main theses of the speaker and research co-authors were as follows: the reason relative success of right-wing populist parties in the new Laender of the FRG were not only the usually raised in recent literature claims that places that are “left behind” or “do not matter” are a breeding ground for the rise of populism. The findings of the speaker and co-contributors suggest that the high vote shares of populist parties are not only associated with low regional levels of welfare as such, but also with the long term decline of a region’s relative welfare. Hence, there are not simply the regions that do “not matter” that are most prone to the rise of populism, but the regions that once mattered, but are in long-term decline. Moreover, regional knowledge (reproduced by the education, culture, human capital) represents an important channel through which the historical decline in wealth explains voting behavior in German regions.

Discussant was Prof. Nikolay Petrov, the author and editor of numerous publications dealing with analysis of Russia’s political regime, post-Soviet transformation, socioeconomic and political development of Russia’s regions, federalism, etc.

Following the speaker's presentation and the contribution of the discussant, the audience engaged in a lively exchange.

The presentation's video can be found here.

More information about the FUB-HSE workshop series "Varieties of Populism in East and West" here.