Geographic Divides and Cosmopolitanism: Evidence From Switzerland

• Date: 01 November 2020
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414020912289
• Subject Matter: Articles

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Comparative Political Studies
2020, Vol. 53(13) 2061 –2090
Geographic Divides
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Evidence From
Switzerland
Rahsaan Maxwell1
Abstract
Large cities are cosmopolitan environments where people embrace inter-
national connections whereas small towns, villages, and the countryside
are more likely to prioritize the maintenance of national traditions. These
geographic divides are at the center of contemporary politics but we do
not know why they exist. One possibility is that cities make people more
cosmopolitan while smaller areas make people less cosmopolitan. However,
credibly measuring geographic effects is difficult because people sort across
geography in ways that are correlated with political attitudes. I address
these methodological challenges with longitudinal data from the Swiss
Household Panel. My central result is that evidence of contextual effects
is limited and unlikely to account for the broad geographic divides. Instead,
sorting is likely to be the most important explanation for spatial polarization
over cosmopolitanism. These findings have several implications for our
understanding of geographic divides.
Keywords
European politics, migration, globalization
1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Corresponding Author:
Rahsaan Maxwell, Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, Hamilton Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
Email: rahsaan@email.unc.edu

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Comparative Political Studies 53(13)
Introduction
Debates over cosmopolitanism are at the center of political conflict across
Europe and North America (de Wilde et al., 2019; Kriesi et al., 2012). The
core tenet of cosmopolitanism is that humans are one community (Beck &
Grande, 2007). Cosmopolitans are open to transnational connections and sup-
port immigration, multiculturalism, and robust international institutions. Anti-
cosmopolitans oppose that agenda and advocate for national sovereignty and
the maintenance of historical national traditions. This divide over how to
engage the world beyond nation-state borders is so intense that it may become
the new cleavage structuring political party competition across Europe and
North America (De Vries, 2018; Hooghe & Marks, 2018).1
One reason for the deep conflict over cosmopolitanism is its overlap with
geographic divides (Alba & Foner, 2017; Hochschild, 2016). Cosmopolitan
orientations are most present in large cities and anti-cosmopolitanism is
strongest in small towns, villages, and the countryside (Cramer, 2016; Lichter
& Ziliak, 2017). This urban–rural split over cosmopolitanism may lead to
segregated societies where the two sides have little prospect for compromise
(Hetherington & Weiler, 2018; Jennings & Stoker, 2016; Rodden, 2019).
Geographic polarization over cosmopolitanism is well-documented but
scholars are still exploring why those geographic divides exist. Research sug-
gests that sorting is one important explanation for geographic polarization,
and it can operate in several ways. One type of sorting is based on macroeco-
nomic demographic trends. Recent economic developments in Europe have
concentrated high-skilled high-wage jobs—and as a result highly educated
professionals—in large cities (Cunningham & Savage, 2017; Oberti &
Préteceille, 2016). This matters for cosmopolitanism divides because highly
educated professionals are more likely than people with less education and
manual occupations to have cosmopolitan pro-immigration and pro–Euro-
pean Union (EU) preferences (Cavaillé & Marshall, 2019; Hainmueller &
Hopkins, 2014; Kunst et al., 2020). Therefore, even though highly educated
professionals are generally cosmopolitan regardless of where they live
(Bornschier et al., 2019; Igarashi & Saito, 2014; Maxwell, 2019), geo-
graphic sorting of educational and occupational groups leads to immigration
and EU attitudes being more positive in large European cities. Another way
in which sorting may operate is if people choose to move to geographic areas
that match their cultural and political preferences (Favell, 2008; Florida,
2005; Tam Cho et al., 2013), although there is an ongoing debate about the
extent of this dynamic (Martin & Webster, 2020; Mummolo & Nall, 2017).
In this article, I explore an alternate explanation for geographic divides:
contextual effects. The logic of contextual effects is that geographic contexts

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shape political attitudes (Ethington & McDaniel, 2007). I do not contest the
existence of geographic sorting, which has robust support in existing studies.
Yet, if there is evidence of contextual effects, that would enrich our under-
standing of geographic divides and point to different strategies for reducing
geographic polarization. Sorting suggests that geographic divides are a sec-
ond-order manifestation of deeper polarization on other dimensions. In con-
trast, contextual effects suggest that something about place is essential for
understanding cosmopolitan attitudes.
When estimating contextual effects, the key methodological challenge is
the fact that people are not randomly distributed across space (Gallego et al.,
2016; Kaufmann & Harris, 2015). One might be tempted to gauge the impor-
tance of context by analyzing whether cosmopolitan attitudes vary across
geography. However, individuals select where to live and attitudinal variation
across space may reflect the types of people who choose to live in different
environments as opposed to the effect of geography on attitudes. This is a
very difficult problem that is impossible to solve without random (or exoge-
nous) assignment to different geographic contexts. In this article, I minimize
concerns about sorting by leveraging longitudinal data from the Swiss
Household Panel (SHP) merged with contextual data on respondents’ munic-
ipal-level environment. This allows me to observe residential trajectories
over time and account for sorting processes in my statistical analysis. I focus
the bulk of my analysis on attitudinal changes within individuals, as they
move from one geographic context to another or as their local context changes
its character.
The main result is that I do not find evidence that contextual effects can
account for broad geographic divides over cosmopolitanism in Switzerland.
There is no evidence that moving to large cities makes people more cosmo-
politan or that moving to smaller towns or the countryside makes people
more anti-cosmopolitan. There is also no evidence that over time, changes in
municipality demographics can account for broad geographic divides over
cosmopolitanism.2 I find limited evidence that spending one’s entire life in
larger as opposed to smaller municipalities is associated with more cosmo-
politan attitudes. However, these results should not be overinterpreted
because—unlike the other two sets of analyses—they rely on cross-sectional
models that make it more difficult to account for sorting. In addition, the
subset of respondents who spend their entire lives in the same municipality is
very small and there are similar geographic divides among movers.
My findings have several implications for our understanding of contem-
porary political geography. First, the limited evidence of contextual effects is
consistent with recent research suggesting that sorting mechanisms are the
key to understanding broad geographic polarization (Gallego et al., 2016;

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Comparative Political Studies 53(13)
Maxwell, 2019). Any effort to bridge urban–rural divides will likely need to
account for the macrohistorical factors that create uneven economic opportu-
nities across space and cluster highly educated professionals in large cities. In
addition, bridging urban–rural divides will require addressing the cultural
factors that can lead people with different political preferences to cluster in
different places (Bishop, 2008; Florida, 2005).
Yet, my findings should not be interpreted as evidence that contextual
effects are irrelevant. I find limited evidence that growing foreign populations
may make people more anti-immigration and that spending one’s whole life in
larger municipalities may make people more cosmopolitan. Neither dynamic
can account for the broad geographic divide over cosmopolitanism, but both
are consistent with recent research arguing that contextual effects are often
limited in scope and conditional on specific factors (Larsen et al., 2019). My
findings build on this research and suggest that municipal-level contexts can
affect cosmopolitan attitudes but are perhaps best considered a minor factor in
the overall landscape of geographic polarization. Future research can further
explore the nuances of how these effects operate.
Geographic divides over cosmopolitanism are likely to remain salient
across Western Europe and North America (Gimpel et al., 2020; Guilluy,
2014; Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). The key implication of this article is that geog-
raphy in and of itself is not likely to be the main cause of that divide.
Hypotheses About Context and Cosmopolitanism
The basic claim of contextual effects is that the experience of living in a spe-
cific geographic context should shape political attitudes (Ethington &
McDaniel, 2007;...