Nadiia Matsiuk (p), Roberto Ganau, Giulio Cainelli

Mehmet Kucukmehmetoglu

Underlying the recent interest in historical persistence is the promise that careful statistical methodology may make the effect of the past on present outcomes observable. A typical approach is to concentrate on a specific outcome (e.g., perceived corruption) near a geographical discontinuity in past institutions, such as a historical border.
However, institutions changed multiple times in the past, due to regime change with or without a corresponding change of state boundaries. Moreover, such boundaries are often endogenous, depending, for example, on defensible geographical features such as rivers or mountain ridges. As a result, clear cut quasi-experiments are hard to come by.
A complementary approach is thus to ask which set of historical institutions and corresponding borders matters the most for today’s observable and quantifiable outcomes, and why.
We rely on historical atlas data to quantify institutional instability as a function of time in Europe in terms of the fraction of area that changes institutional set-up every 5 years over the interval from 1000 AD to 2000 AD. Averaging over time, we obtain a global indicator of institutional instability. It is immediately clear that geography plays a crucial role in instability, with rugged terrain and high-altitude regions experience less instability.
We study the time series of institutional instability through dynamical system methods. We find that its autocorrelation properties are non-trivial, suggesting long-term memory and possibly an underlying low dimensional dynamic rather than mere noise. This is qualitatively compatible with a simple model, where institutional instability acts as a catalyst of transition between equilibria.
See extended abstract.

Pedro Fierro, Ignacio Aravena (p), Patricio Aroca

Nadiia Matsiuk

The study of political disaffection has become particularly relevant in recent years with the emergence of populist narratives and the polarization experienced by different consolidated and emerging democracies. In this context, the link between territory and the decline of citizen attitudes has not been sufficiently studied. Using data from the Chilean region of Valparaíso, we analyze the territories play on the development of external political efficacy, i.e., system responsiveness beliefs. Our results suggest that citizens who live in neighborhoods with a high concentration of low-educated individuals tend to feel that the political system is not responsive to them. Interestingly, the education at the individual level and the concentration of poverty is not significant. This leads us to support the notion of "places that don’t matter," where feelings of abandonment and political inefficacy are generated.

Melania Riefolo (p), Nicola Faccilongo

Ignacio Aravena

The pandemic situation has highlighted the vulnerabilities and interdependencies between rural and urban communities.
Just think of many cases of citizens returning to inner areas and appreciating more and more living spaces and a cleaner environment, going against the grain and challenging the polarization process.
This social phenomenon is specular to the new political interests which have been focusing on exploring solutions and policies of economic regeneration in these rural areas, as witnessed by the Cork Declaration (2016). It is a fact that the inner areas dually affect the economic territorial reality: on the one hand, inner areas underpin the territorial development thanks to their intrinsic richness of natural resources, community spirit, and the handing down of their values and identity; on the other hand, the inner areas reveal themself not self-sufficient because of their incapacity to fulfill their internal demands on their own. Considering that, inner areas continuously request exogenous resources from the urban zones, hampering the economic growth of the whole territorial ecosystem.
This vicious circle of the inner center is becoming increasingly harmful also for the dramatic demographic situation. Not by chance, the brain drain is now rife and increases the backward of these areas with a multiplier effect. It is easy to imagine that politicians are voted by the remaining people and, even them, are old-age. So that, the political body interested in running after obsolete requestson the other hand and it is not able to be on track with the current tendencies.
The purpose of this research is to support the political and social efforts developing a new theoretical-methodological model of territorial innovation able to trigger territorial, institutional, and community transformative dynamics decisive for regenerating inner areas.
The proposed method is following the neo-endogenous approach in the short supplied chain, and attempts to promote area-based local development through innovation, cooperation, and networking.
The model will emphasize the role of the endogenous resources of the inner areas bringing citizen-consumers towards these areas and favoring their becoming as an experiential milieu where production, consumption, and communities coincide.
The method will be applied to three cases studies to provide both political and economical implications. For the first aspect, the researcher will fit out new insights and suggestions for SNAI application, meanwhile, for the second aspect, the reasercher will develop an innovative territorial model propritious to the inner areas development.

Mehmet Kucukmehmetoglu (p), Yasin Fahjan, Muhammed Ziya

Melania Riefolo

Beyond the national leaderships and visionary profiles, each the European Union (EU) countries have certain weights in the union. These weights, on the one hand, can be attributed to the size and scales of countries’ economies, on the other hand, can be attributed to the strategic geographic locations and their neighborhood connections in the EU geography. In this research, the strengths and weaknesses of the EU countries originated from geography are measured by means of spatial cooperative game theory applications. Study measures the benefits of geographic continuity as an outcome of coalition by making larger scale and more productive union economy and creating “home market effect”. Geographic connections between the countries are the necessary condition for setting extensive and ultimately comprehensive coalitions. In other words, geographic continuity is necessary condition to fulfill the economic flows in the EU geography. In this respect, the more spatial connections with the neighboring countries has the more potential to form productive coalitions with the others. Besides, when the size and scale of economies are large, the established coalitions become more productive as compared to the isolated countries or partially small country sub-coalitions. In the developed linear programming based optimization model, which is adopted from urban development/regeneration model allocating density bonuses provided in order to reach extensive and ultimately grand coalition, selected 24 the EU member states are evaluated via spatial cooperative games considering all forms of benefit generating subgroup and grand coalitions among each other at the international level. Coalition benefits are hypothetically derived from trades and flows of goods and services providing consumers and producers surpluses, scale economies and home market effect in the union geography. Results have shown that some the countries at the core of the union have significant economic contribution to the Union. These indispensable countries are Germany, France, Poland, Hungry. When the size of country economies are considered, Germany is the geographic and economic engine of the Union. Finally, these contributions also becomes as a source of expecting, requesting, and extracting more benefits from the Union economy.