Introduction and Contribution

One cannot today talk about important political phenomena such as democratic backsliding. Indeed, political leaders and parties in both democracies and autocracies increasingly appeal to differences between places, especially the divide between urban and rural communities, to mobilize voters. Narratives that blame urbanites for the social and economic problems facing rural communities have become an important tool for justifying anti-democratic measures and polarizing electorates. At the same time, voters in many urban places feel increasingly resentful toward rural residents, arguing that these residents exert too much political control over their lives. Apart from these broader developments, however, much remains unknown about how places shape and are shaped by politics. 

In “Place Attachments,” Elizabeth Mitchell Elder and Hans Lueders argue that social scientists have failed to make an important distinction between being attached to a place and identifying with groups that live in a place. Place attachments provide a sense of continuity and stability in one’s life. By contrast, place identities are tied to various “reference groups” that share attributes and values and provide members with a sense of self-esteem. This distinction matters: individuals can be attached to a specific place, such as rural Appalachia or New York City, while not identifying with rural or urban places or the people who inhabit them. The former — what the authors call “place attachment” — brings about a deep investment in one’s local community and strong local political engagement. The latter — what the authors call “place identity” — may bring about the same amount of local political engagement, but can also come with animosity toward individuals residing in other places or types of places — animosity that can be exploited by political leaders. 

To understand the consequences of place attachments, Elder and Lueders conduct original surveys of voters in Germany, the United States, and the Appalachian region of the United States. Survey respondents with a strong sense of belonging and commitment to their place are more trusting of local governments, more engaged with local politics, and tend to prefer local candidates. “Place Attachments” makes an important contribution by conceptualizing and measuring a phenomenon that has often been conflated with identity and that shapes political behavior  in consequential  ways.

The Importance of American and German Place-Based Attachments

Elder and Lueders leverage original surveys of voters in the United States and Germany because they differ considerably in terms of mobility and the role that place and geographic identity have played in each country’s history. An additional survey run among residents of Appalachia draws attention to a region where place attachments are strong despite the region’s poor socioeconomic outcomes; many residents remain strongly attached to it. 

The authors operationalize place attachments in terms of respondents’ agreement with five statements about their current place of residence: that they feel like they belong there, that it is an important part of who they are, that they feel at home there, that it reminds them of their past, and that they would like to remain there for the rest of their lives. Respondents varied significantly in terms of the strength of their place attachments: about 25% agreed with all five statements, 15% disagreed with all five, and the remainder were evenly distributed across the other combinations (e.g., agreeing with two, agreeing with three). However, distributions were similar across all three geographic samples.
 

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Fig. 1: Distribution of strength of local attachments in all three samples: share of respondents who agree somewhat or strongly with the number of statements reported on the horizontal axis.
 

Two main demographic correlates of place attachments are found to be of importance: older people and those who have resided for longer in a place have stronger attachments. In terms of politics, Germans who support the Social Democratic Party and the center-right Christian Democratic Union have stronger place attachments than do supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany. In the United States, by contrast, the strength of one’s partisan identity matters more than party affiliation: Democrats and Republicans both score higher, especially as they identify more strongly with either party, than Independents.
 

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Fig. 2: Demographic correlates of local attachments. Estimated strength of local attachments by select demographic groups.
 

Local attachments are weakly related to measures of a place’s “objective” quality, such as life expectancy or unemployment rates, and they also vary little across urbanites and ruralites. The latter is surprising given the common assumption that rural residents have especially strong attachments to place. When asked to describe what they like most about a place, respondents rarely mentioned their co-residents’ physical attributes or values. This provides evidence for the authors’ claim that place attachments are conceptually distinct from place identities.

The authors then analyze how place attachments relate to political behavior. They find that respondents with stronger place attachments are relatively more engaged in their local communities: they are more trusting of their local governments, spend more time reading and talking about local politics, and are more likely to believe that they can influence political outcomes in their local communities. Individuals with strong local attachments are also more likely to participate in local elections or local voluntary organizations.
 

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Fig. 5: Correlations between local attachments and engagement in national and local politics. Left and center panels: estimated relationship between local attachments and various measures of political engagement at the national and local levels. Right panel: estimated relationship between local attachments and the difference in national vs. local engagement (negative values here mean relatively more local than national engagement).
 

Finally, respondents participated in a “forced-choice conjoint experiment,” which involved choosing between pairs of hypothetical candidates. Candidate profiles included their position on the importance of local autonomy, their experience in local politics, and length of residence in the community. Respondents with higher place attachments were significantly more likely to choose hypothetical candidates with stronger local orientations or connections — that is, candidates who supported autonomy, had local experience, and had lived in the community. Place attachments thus seem to shape not only how individuals perceive their communities but the criteria they use to evaluate politicians. 
 

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Fig. 6: Local considerations have a stronger effect on candidate choice among voters with strong local attachments. Left panel: propensity that a candidate with the attribute on the y axis is selected (marginal means), estimated separately for voters with strong and weak local attachments. Center panel: difference in marginal means between voters with strong and weak local attachments. Right panel: differences in average marginal component effects (AMCEs) between respondents with strong and weak local attachments for a particular attribute level compared to the baseline. See Figure A4 in appendix B.3 full results. See Figure A5 in appendix B.4 for AMCEs.
 

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

Introduction and Contribution

The United States is frequently described as exceptional among other advanced industrial democracies, especially those of Western Europe. Popular narratives attribute this to the US Constitution, a commitment to individual liberty, and economic opportunity, or the “American dream.” Scholarly accounts, by contrast, have focused on institutional differences, especially the absence of a comprehensive American welfare state. To be sure, these claims must be qualified. Social and economic mobility has declined substantially in the US over recent decades, while Americans derive sizable welfare benefits from tax relief schemes such as retirement savings. In what sense, and relative to which countries, is the US in fact exceptional? 

In “American Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Julieta Casas argues that exceptionalism should be conceptualized in two distinct ways: (1) The US’s lack of convergence with Western European countries, despite similar outcomes (e.g., prosperity and industrialization) and different starting points (limited vs. comprehensive welfare states). (2) The US’s divergence from Latin American countries in terms of outcomes (e.g., development vs. underdevelopment) despite similar starting points (colonization, independence movements seeking Republican government). Put differently, if initial conditions are X and outcomes are Y, the two corresponding questions are “Why Y despite no X?” and “Why X but not Y?” Casas maintains that while much valuable scholarship has focused on (1), especially in the ‘American Political Development’ tradition, an analysis of (2) holds promise to sharpen our explanations of exceptionalism and methodological rigor. 

This reframing of exceptionalism has broader significance beyond academic debates. Indeed, the United States is currently undergoing the most pronounced democratic decline in its history. Similar kinds of declines — particularly those motivated by right-wing, anti-immigrant, populist sentiment — have been observed across Europe and Latin America. Resisting authoritarian leaders and movements in the US requires understanding cases of successful and failed resistance elsewhere. This kind of understanding depends on making appropriate kinds of comparisons.

Two Ways of Thinking About Exceptionalism

Lack of Convergence with Western Europe:

Perceptions of American exceptionalism vis-à-vis Europe date to at least the early nineteenth century. Alexis de Tocqueville saw the US as uniquely equal compared to his native France, owing to its lack of a feudal past and abundance of land, among other factors. Twentieth-century observers highlighted the absence of a strong American socialist party as well as dramatic rises in incarceration rates and income inequality — especially after the late 1970s. However, these accounts have been tempered by those who sought to show how, for example, the early American state was not exceptionally weaker than its European counterparts. Although the US lacked a powerful federal government, other institutions, such as Congress, the judiciary, and political parties, were quite strong.

One significant, less disputed case of exceptionalism is the early American bureaucracy, which was substantially more ‘patrimonial’ than in Western Europe. In other words, US politicians treated bureaucratic privileges — such as jobs — as rewards or ‘patronage’ to be doled out in exchange for political support. This lack of convergence with professionalized European bureaucracies was most famously explained by reference to the ‘sequencing’ of popular suffrage and bureaucratic development. In the US, suffrage came first, which gave politicians incentives to behave as patrons interacting with voters or ‘clients.’ In Europe, by contrast, suffrage came later, which enabled bureaucracies to professionalize without electoral pressures. 

Divergence from Latin America:

Although the United States is often seen as standing apart from other countries in the Americas, they share many starting points. These include similar times of independence from the European colonial powers, presidential and Republican as opposed to parliamentary and monarchical systems, and racialized hierarchies where darker-skinned and indigenous groups were oppressed. Across the Americas, weak federal governments struggled to exercise authority over vast territories. This led to intransigent pockets of authoritarian rule — compare the US South under Jim Crow with the decades-long rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Oaxaca, Mexico. However, the US proved quite exceptional in terms of its prosperity and industrialization; indeed, it surpassed not only Latin America but also its former colonizer.

Social scientists have analyzed divergence by using the US as a comparative case study. This includes asking why the US diverged from Canada in terms of their different healthcare systems. In addition, the question of divergence within Latin America, in terms of different kinds of twentieth-century regimes (e.g., military dictatorship, traditional dictatorship, democracy), has received much scholarly attention. American exceptionalism vis-à-vis Latin America, however, has not. 

One of Casas’ key contributions is to show how comparing the US and Latin America forces a rethinking of the above-mentioned sequencing debate. It is true that the American bureaucracy professionalized much later than in Europe. However, explaining this development in terms of the timing of suffrage runs into a problem: Latin American countries also introduced suffrage before building their bureaucracies, yet in these cases, professionalization was either extremely slow or has yet to occur. In Mexico, it was not until 100 years after the franchise was expanded that civil service reforms were enacted. 

In comparison to Latin America, then, the US looks like a pioneer and success story of bureaucratic development — not a laggard in comparison to Western Europe. Casas thus highlights an important point about reference classes or vantage points. To use a related example, Americans may rightly view the US as more free relative to India or Brazil, yet overlook its distance from more robust democracies such as Canada or Japan. This underscores that exceptionalism is not a fixed property, but rather is defined by the comparisons we make.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.