Dreaming of home? Representative Claim-Making and the Rise of Rural Parties in Europe

Across Europe, various new political parties have emerged that seek to better represent the interests of "the countryside". The launch of the Rural Alliance in France follows the electoral success of the recently created Dutch FarmerCitizenMovement (BBB). In summer 2023, opinion polls that signal that 72% of Irish farmers would vote for a new farmer’s party if one was set up, stirred political debate on farmer’s feelings of disenfranchisement. In recent times, established parties, too, have sought to (re)brand themselves as defenders of rural interests. Key to this demarche is the mobilizing potential of rural parties. As the electoral victory of the Dutch FarmerCitizenMovement signals, the electoral appeal of rural parties extends far beyond the countryside. The emergence of these parties and movements leads us to wonder if we are witnessing a revival of the traditional rural-urban divide or rather a transmutation thereof. The growing celebration of so-called rural ways of life and felt need to protect the countryside from outside threats cannot be dissociated from broader political imaginaries that attest to the threats of globalization (migration and the fragmentation of national cultures), feminism and multiculturalism (an egalitarian discourse that dismantles traditional ways of life and attends individuals to their privileges), and climate change regulations (that affect the business of farmers and personal lifestyles alike). The attractiveness of rural parties appears, at least in part, to stem from their potential at mobilizing broader dissatisfaction with left-leaning elites and citizens whose policy preferences (be it on issues pertaining to gender, migration/multiculturalism, climate reform) are conceived as patronizing and as disproportionally taxing those who are, comparatively speaking, less privileged. This paper builds from this intuition and seeks to better understand precisely whom these rural parties claim to represent. It conducts a comparative analysis of the representative claims formulated by the Rural Alliance in France and the FarmerCitizenMovement in the Netherlands. It draws on data collected from the parties’ online presence and social media channels, and critically asks which constituents are (not) represented, how and why? The analysis draws on insights from performance and speech act theories to promote greater attention to how the subject represented is defined and cast against other constituents and how its need to be represented/called into being is justified.