‘Left behind’ people or places? The role of community economies in political discontent

Modern economics attributes great importance to spatial inequality: yet in studying discontent with politics, existing research has mostly neglected local contexts and attitudes people hold about them. I use British Election Study data to investigate the factors leading people to believe their (self-defined) community is ignored by the political process. Firstly, real economic contexts play a role, since residents of low-income communities tend to express higher discontent. Secondly, negative perceptions of the local economy are associated with higher discontent, whereas equivalent ‘egotropic’ measures of people’s personal economic situation have no such effect. Thirdly, I observe a ‘grievance’ effect wherein people are particularly high in discontent when they believe that the national economy is more successful than that of one’s local community. I conclude that in understanding the causes of a sense of political neglect, the local community plays a substantial role, and should be a fruitful angle for future research in the domain of discontent.