Cross-cutting or overlapping? The urban-rural cleavage in a historical perspective

In the literature of electoral politics, geography has been rediscovered as a political cleavage. Traditionally, the work of Lipset and Rokkan (1967) described the urban-rural cleavage as a power struggle over economic resources and the centre–periphery cleavage as a struggle over national identity. Both of these cut across other cleavages. Current research, however, finds increased overlap in attitudes, depicting the rise of a green, progressive and left-leaning urban electorate and a nationalist and conservative rural population that contributes to elevated levels of polarization. This paper provides new knowledge about the development of the urban-rural cleavage in European multi-party systems over time, by analysing six decades of unique survey data from Norway. We ask: How and to what extent has the urban-rural cleavage become more overlapping or cross-cutting since the 1950s and until today? Specifically, we study changes in the attitudes of rural and urban populations towards new and old politics issues between 1977 and 2021. We also assess the changing content and saliency of the urban-rural cleavage by making use of Most Important Issue (MIP) survey questions. Overall, the paper contributes with novel insights of the development of a century-old cleavage that has again come to the fore in electoral politics.