Place-based policy and politics.

Neoliberal 'space-blind' policy-making has failed; place-based policy-making must give power to local communities and destabilise the status quo in order to allow communities to escape from under-development traps. Unorthodox thinking and lessons from Italy's Inner Areas Strategy suggest how this can be done.

One of the tenets of the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s was that policymaking should be 'space-blind': (1) economic and social inequalities among places would eventually even out through market forces (that is, the mobility of people and the spreading of innovation); public investments should follow the location decisions of corporations, which would ultimately benefit everybody; institutional reforms should spread 'best practices' designed independently of particular places. Anger over increased regional inequalities and the manifestation of this anger at the polls is now alerting economic and political elites to the importance of place in policy-making. Back in 2017, explicitly referring to 'voters for Brexit and Mr Trump', The Economist argued that 'unless policymakers grapple seriously with the problem of regional inequality, the fury of those voters will only increase ... Assuaging the anger of the left-behind means realising that places matter too'. (2)

But what exactly is a place-based approach? How does it differ from traditional development policies? What does it imply for traditional sectoral policies? And for the role of citizens within democracy? And finally, can it really help turn anger away from fuelling an authoritarian dynamic and create a dynamic of social, economic and political emancipation? In this article I will address these questions by drawing from an available body of theory and practice and from a country-wide strategy in Italian inner areas.

The context: interpersonal and territorial inequalities

Everything starts with high--and often rising--levels of inequality. The facts about economic inequalities are clear-cut. Interpersonal inequalities in terms of income have stopped decreasing in the last thirty years within all western countries, while world-wide between-countries income inequality has been decreasing, due to the rise in non-western countries of a new middle class. (3) At the same time, wealth inequality has significantly increased. This rise in economic inequality is unevenly geographically distributed: a divide has been opening between successful and declining areas. Regional economic inequalities have risen. (4)

Social inequalities, defined as inequalities in access to, and the quality of, fundamental services, are also a source of inequality (often increasing inequality) between different places. Within cities, the benefits of urban concentration do not accrue to the same people, but rather to different sections of society, living in different areas. The 'winners', due to their location and social origin, benefit from the positive externalities (unearned benefits) that arise from agglomeration, such as the matching, sharing and learning externalities of agglomerations and from better services. (5) The 'losers' are largely excluded from these advantages, but instead bear all the negative externalities: expensive and crowded housing; high insecurity; air and noise pollution; and the pressures of diversity leading to increased urban segregation. (6) Meanwhile, rural areas have been hit by a shift of both private and public services to major cities and a decrease in the quality of essential services. (7) This situation has been worsened by the financial crisis and, in Europe, by budget cuts that have hit health, education and mobility services.

The third dimension of territorial inequality has to do with recognition inequalities: (8) people's perception that their values and norms (sameness) are not being recognised, are being superseded, or are even despised. Many feel that their needs and aspirations (their one-ness) is ignored by the authorities. Feeling a lack of recognition in turn leads to frustration and self-doubt. While recognition inequalities affect people everywhere, they are particularly striking in rural areas in Europe and North America, where about 27-28 per cent of the population of those regions live. (9) People living in these areas perceive more keenly than city dwellers the risks and disadvantages of cosmopolitanism and diversity, while finding it difficult to exploit their advantages. Their role as guardians of the land, environment and paysage, and as labourers engaged in agriculture, forestry and pasture, very often goes unrecognised.

The same is true for the specificity of their needs in terms of essential services. In short, they suffer a 'form of dislocation, prolonged and widespread neglect, [and] challenge to identity'; this represents 'the undermining of rural communities'. (10)

Inequalities and authoritarian politics

A mix of economic, social and recognition inequalities, and the interaction of these inequalities, has produced normative fears (anxieties over the breakup of social norms), resentment and anger, and we find these responses in some places more than in others. Lacking credible political alternatives for social, economic and political emancipation, the sentiments of people in 'places that don't matter'--as Andres Rodriguez Pose defines them--are fuelling an 'authoritarian dynamic'. This is Karen Stenner's term, in her prescient 2005 study, for a set of feelings and behaviours including: a rejection of diversity and an aspiration to homogeneity within closed (local or national) communities; an aversion to, often scorn for, political elites and experts; and a call for tough authorities sanctioning 'deviant behaviours'. (11) Electoral support for anti-elite parties shows a clear territorial dimension, linked to the map of long-term economic decline, a major source of inequalities and resentment. (12)

Redistributing power to people living in 'places that don't matter' as an alternative to the authoritarian dynamic, removing the obstacles that prevent the flourishing of the innovative forces found in those places, and turning their anger into a fight for social advancement--these are today primary objectives for the left across Europe, together with bringing about radical changes in the main processes of wealth formation (pre-distributive policies). (13) Rather than promoting new barriers, or a culture of 'us v. the others', the objective must be to enhance people's 'sustainable substantial freedom'. (14) Understanding how to move ahead requires the analysis of the causes of such widespread territorial inequalities.

The general rise in inequalities is often attributed to major...