What makes peripheral places matter? Applying the concept of political capital within a multiple capital framework

Present research focusses on how urbanization has led to ‘territorial inequality ’ that marginalizes ‘places that don ’ t matter ’ , understood as places neglected by politicians. In this strand of literature, rural areas are consequently singled out as belonging to the unfortunate group of ‘left behind places ’ and ‘places that don ’ t matter ’ . However, to what extent can this be supported empirically? Based on a Danish national survey we conducted 2011/2012, and applying the concept of political capital within a multiple capital framework, we attempt to answer three questions: Do rural areas per se have little political power and influence? What makes some rural areas have more political capital than others? Does local political capital influence the local development in rural areas? We measure political capital by asking respondents in 476 rural parishes to assess how much influence local citizens exert on political decisions that concern their own, local area. The results show a significant variation in political capital across the sample. Further, regression analyses show that the local stocks of five forms of capital (physical, economic, human, social, symbolic) are positively related to the level of local political capital. Finally, regression analyses show that the initial level of political capital in 2012 has a positive and long-term effect on rural population growth throughout the period 2012 – 2023, while controlling for various exogenous factors.


Introduction
An emerging strand of literature explores how people in declining areas feel left behind, neglected, and deprived of opportunities, hence living in 'places that don't matter' to mainstream urban-thinking politicians.As first argued by Rodríguez-Pose (2018, 2) in his article "The revenge of the places that don't matter (and what to do about it)", this perceived territorial inequality has spurred people in declining areas to "revolt against the status quo" by electing populistic politicians, see also Rodríguez-Pose et al. (2023), Vigna (2023), Diemer et al. (2022), Lenzi andPerucca (2021), andRodríguez-Pose (2020).
Concerning declining rural areas, recent studies have shown that residents in rural and remote areas are more likely to cast an anti-EU vote (Dijkstra et al., 2020;de Dominicis et al., 2022), are more likely to feel higher distrust against the EU institutions ( Lenzi and Perucca, 2021), are more likely to distrust the national government (McKay et al., 2021), and are more likely to favor populist parties and candidates, which was found in evidence from the US (Rodríguez-Pose et al., 2023;Carpenter et al., 2022;Munis, 2022), UK and Austria (Essletzbichler et al., 2018), and the Netherlands (de Lange et al., 2023).
In the above strand of literature, rural areas are consequently singled out as belonging to the unfortunate group of 'left behind places' and 'places that don't matter' -at times, alongside medium-sized cities, towns, and former industrial areas.Moreover, rural areas are mostly treated as one single type of area without much debate on the differences between rural areas.However, as discussed not least by Westlund (2014Westlund ( , 2018) ) in connection with his theoretical concept of the 'post-urban world', rural areas are not the same.They can largely be divided into two main groups, that is, rural areas close to expanding cities and peripheral rural areas (Westlund, 2014(Westlund, , 2018;;Westlund and Borsekova, 2023).
On this background, and applying the concept of political capital, we seek to take some further steps in the debate about 'left behind places' and 'places that don't matter' by asking the following three questions: Do rural areas per se have little political power and influence?What makes some rural areas have more political capital than others?Does local political capital influence the local development in rural areas?
To answer these questions, we use data from a Danish national survey we undertook in 2011/2012 (n = 2000).We analyze political capital in these rural parishes not as a single, isolated capital, but, in line with Casey (2008), as a function of other capital forms and always directed towards the political arena.Hence, political capital is "derived from established capital forms" or, more specifically, "an amalgamation of capital types combined in various ways for specific political markets" (Casey, 2008, 17, 2).This amalgamation of capital forms has also been termed a rural area's territorial capital (Camagni and Capello, 2013), consisting of this area's total stock of physical, human, economic, social, and symbolic capital (Svendsen and Sørensen, 2007;Sørensen, 2018).Together, and when directed towards specific political arenas or 'markets', these capital forms can be used to obtain political objectives, including political support and economic subsidies.
We will first assess levels of 'territorial' capital in 476 Danish rural parishes, consisting of the five forms of capital: physical, human, economic, social, symbolic.Next, we use correlation and regression analyses to estimate how these forms of capital correlate with the level of political capital, by us operationalized as the size of influence rural residents have on political decisions that concern their local area.Finally, to assess whether local political capital has an influence on local development, we examine the relationship between the level of political capital in 2012 and parish population growth in the following years from 2012 to 2023 while controlling for various exogenous factors, that is, controlling for municipality fixed effects, whether the parish is a city near rural parish or a peripheral rural parish, type of municipality, region, and size of nearby city.
The rest of the article is organized as follows.Section 2 deals with the concept of political capital in rural studies.We first consider why political capital may be important for the development of rural areas, then look at the prevalence and definitions of political capital, then explain how the term has been used in previous rural studies, and, finally, how it can be incorporated in a Bourdieu inspired multiple capital framework.Section 3, the methodology section, explains how the national survey was undertaken, including an explanation of how forms of capital were measured, and who the respondents were.Section 4 presents our results, while Section 5 is a conclusion.

Depopulation and rural disempowerment
Rural disempowerment is an important topic when considering that many rural communities have been under pressure for decades, demographically as well as in relation to infrastructure and public services, see Liu and Li (2017) and Li et al. (2019) for an overview.
Hence, if political capital is lagging in local communities, political disempowerment, impoverishment, resentment and widespread 'helplessness' may gradually take place due to ongoing urbanization and centralization.If we understand why some rural communities are rich on political capitalthat is, "the resources that an actor can use to influence policy formation processes and achieve outcomes that serve the actor's perceived interests" (Zhou, 2009, 788) we may learn about ways to build up such resources in rural communities and, by this, secure sustainability, including demographic sustainability.This may then lead to more political capital and more influence over own development in a virtuous circle.Besides, such legitimate empowerment of rural populations, i.e., without the use of illegal, shady methods such as bribing and cronyism, may counteract populism and, perhaps even, anti-democratic movements.
That it is important for local people to empower themselves vis-à-vis a rapidly increasing urban population is clearly evidenced by a global demographic trend.Thus, urbanization, primarily due to rural-to-urban migration, has not slowed down during the 21st century but has indeed further increased (Our World in Data, 2023). 1 As percentage of the total world population, there has been an increase in the share of urbanites from 34% in 1960 to 56% in 2021 (World Bank, 2023). 2 It should however be noted that, since the 1970s, we have witnessed minor waves of counterurbanizationalso termed urban-to-rural migrationin countries like Australia (Buckle and Osbaldiston, 2022), Greece (Gkartzios, 2013;Gkartzios et al., 2017), the Netherlands (Haartsen and Stockdale, 2017), Korea (Ma et al., 2018), Sweden (Sandow and Lundholm, 2023), and Denmark (Herslund, 2012).
The rural studies literature has found many negative consequences of global depopulation in rural areas, including poor rural living standards (Young, 2013), adolescent outmigration (Svendsen, 2018), school closures (Sørensen et al., 2021) and hospital closures (Sørensen, 2008;Kaufman et al., 2016).As mentioned, one might also be worried about the 'voting revenge' of marginalized citizens, destabilizing democratic states (Rodríguez-Pose, 2020).The Eurostat regional yearbook 2017, which directs a special focus on rural areas, finds that the main challenges for European rural populations are exposure to poverty and social exclusion, more difficult health care access than in urban areas, inclination to leave education early and a digital divide between rural and urban dwellers (Eurostat, 2017).Many of these findings are confirmed in the most recent yearbook (Eurostat, 2022).The question is, however, whether rural residents can use their 'territorial capital' (e.g., Camagni and Capello, 2013;Perucca, 2014;Fratesi and Perucca, 2018) to achieve political capital and thus avoid becoming marginalized, impoverished, disempowered and low educated.

Political capital in rural Denmark
Political capital in rural communities in democratic, Western countries has, to our knowledge, hitherto not been studied systematically, including the specific relation between political capital and population growth.We therefore think our Danish case would be a relevant contribution.
Even in a small, Scandinavian welfare state like Denmark, with a small income gap and rich on democratic traditions, we find the abovementioned populistic, anti-urban tendencies, reinforced by an ongoing rural population decline and large-scale closures of public service institutions.This trend is clearly mirrored in the two most recent general elections.Hence, in the 2015 general election the right-wing, populist Danish People's Party received a 21% vote, prevailingly receiving votes from rural areas, especially in the southern part of Denmark close to Germany, and only very few from the two largest cities, Copenhagen, and Aarhus (Nørtoft, 2019).In the 2022 general election, The Danish People's Party only received a 2.6% vote, being outdone by two other, newly established right-wing, populist parties, namely the nationalist 1 According to Our World in Data (2023), the increase in urbanization took place after year 1900 (16.4% urban population).By 1950, this share had increased to near 30%.In 2007, the urban population exceeded the rural population.In 2023, out of an 8 billion world population the share of urban dwellers had increased to 57.5%, while the number in 2050 is estimated to near 65%.
2 Take, for example, the largest population in the world, China.In 1980, 19.4% lived in urban regions, increasing to 50% in 2010.In 2021, this number has risen to near 65%, out of a population of 1.4 billion people (Statista, 2023a).The same goes for India, the second largest population in the world, however in a much slower pace.Here, the urban population increased from 31.3% in 2011 to 35.4% in 2021 (Statista, 2023b).And what regards the third largest population in the world, the US population, we see a huge urbanization already from the mid-19th century, going from 40% in year 1900, to 73.7% in year 1980 to 82.7% in 2020 (Statista, 2023c).
New Right (3.7%), and the Denmark Democrats (8.1%), the latter receiving rural votes on the basis of an explicit rural and anti-urban political agenda (Statistics Denmark, 2022).
As mentioned, rural-to-urban migration has been significant in recent years in Denmark (see e.g., Sørensen, 2014;Sørensen et al., 2021).Thus, out of the 98 municipalities in Denmark 2000-2022, the population in the 16 so-called 'peripheral municipalities' declined by 9.4%, while the population in the 35 'urban municipalities' increased by 17.5%, compared to a 10.2% increase in the total population during this period (Municipal Statistics Denmark, 2023).This has led to cuts in public service, including closures of public schools, libraries, police stations, courts, nursing homes, medical practices, health care centers and hospitals, often leading to rural discontent.Seen in a longer, historical perspective, this may mirror a general 'drain' of political capital in Danish rural areas, partly due to a steady population decline following a modernized agriculture from the mid-1960s, and partly to a strong centralization discourse, reflected in rural policies, and culminating with a municipal reform in 2007 reducing 271 municipalities to 98 (Winther and Svendsen, 2012;Sørensen, 2015;Sørensen et al., 2021).
In this context, qualitative evidence suggests that it may be crucial for the single local community to have a good and effective relation to their municipality to get economic support, access to legal advice, guidance, building licenses, maintenance and improvement of public service, good publicity, goodwill, etc. -in short, political capital enabling them to control and impact political processes in their own area.Just to mention a couple of examples, in the village of Hesselager, a leading figure within the local associational life stated that "when I talk to a politician, I get positive response.They value our engagement (…) It was easy to get the necessary help and support to the SG-House [the local sports and assembly house].I think we have political backing" (Bernicken, 2015).And in the renowned local community of Klitmøllercalled 'Cold Hawaii', a surfer paradisea local told a researcher in an interview that they "for many years had had a political lifeline into the municipality", this 'lifeline' consisting of a strong politician from their local community who had properly secured their interests in the municipal council (Svendsen, 2007, 71).
Hence, we might learn something from successful local communities in rural Denmark.How do they achieve high political capital, and does this improve their own communities in respect to both overall living standards and population growth?

Prevalence and main definitions of political capital
Applying Google Scholar, we initially undertook a minor content analysis study to find out about the historical frequency of the usage of 'political capital', as well as key definitions 1900-2021.

The old definition
As can be seen in Fig. 1, 'political capital' first became widespread from about 1990.This was prevailingly due to Pierre Bourdieu's conceptualization of an innovative neo-capital theory within the cultural sciences, in opposition to mainstream economic theory (Svendsen and Svendsen, 2003).From 1900 to the start 1980s, however, the concept was almost exclusively used within political studies, or analyses, where political capital either denoted a national capital; or the rather suspicious act of politicians 'making political capital' out of negotiations, political alliances, etc.In sum, it was a tangible, visible and quantifiable entity, in line with a positivistic thinking within political science and social science as such (cf.French, 2011, 216).

The new definition
From the early 1980s and onwards, a significant shift took place, and political capital gradually became a part of the sociologists' vocabulary as well, while the old definitions continued to exist.A new constructivist definition focusing on unequal power relations and based on intangible assets, such as credibility, reputation and trust, was mentioned for the first time in 1979 by Bourdieu in his Marxist inspired article, "Symbolic power", published in the journal Critique of Anthropology: "The dominant fractions, whose power is based on economic and political capital, seek to impose the legitimacy of their domination either through their own symbolic production (discourse, writings, etc.) or through the intermediary of conservative ideologists" (Bourdieu, 1979, 80)."Holders of political capital" are also mentioned in other publications (Bourdieu, 1986(Bourdieu, , 1998)).He discerns between organizational and individual holders and accentuates the importance of social recognition and "good reputation" -something that can be inherited (Bourdieu, 1991, 194; see also French, 2011, 217-218).In this perspective, political capital becomes a form of symbolic power, in the sense of 'credit'3 leading to credibility and domination: [Political capital is] credit founded on belief and recognition.[It] is the product of subjective acts of recognition (…) a power which those who submit to it give to he who exercises it (Bourdieu, 1981, cited in French, 2011, 217).
Together with economic and cultural capital, political capital appears to be the most powerful.Hence, ordinary citizens without high levels of (legitimate) cultural capital are bereft of political capital: "The concentration of political capital in the hands of a small number of people is something that is prevented with greater difficulty and thus more likely to happen the more completely ordinary individuals are divested of the material and cultural instruments necessary for them to participate actively in politics, that is, above all, leisure time and cultural capital" (Bourdieu, 1991, 172).This brings into mind the abovementioned disempowerment of rural populations and the political discontent of ordinary rural citizens due to a perceived 'territorial inequality' (cf., Camagni and Capello, 2013;Rodríguez-Pose, 2020).
Bourdieu's redefinition of political capital was just one out of a whole plethora of forms of capital, including bureaucratic, scientific, linguistic, educational, technical, economic, cultural, symbolic, and social capital (see, e.g., Bourdieu, 2005).Although symbolic, political capital appears to be the most powerful form of capital, as it can be seen as derived from other capital forms and always shaped by, and directed towards, specific political markets (Casey, 2008) -a perspective we apply in our study.It might therefore surprise that this capital form remained marginal in Bourdieu's work (cf., Schugurensky, 2000, 418).

Post-Bourdieusian definitions
Later definitions have generally attempted to concretize the concept a bit more.A dictionary definition tends to merge the old, essentialist meaning with the more recent, constructivist, stressing the aspect of goodwill as a 'currency'.Hence, political capital "refers to the goodwill, trust and influence that politicians earn or build up with the public through the pursuit of policies that people like or respect.It is then possible to use this goodwill to push through unpopular legislation without severely damaging their support or that of their political party, and also to win elections.This type of capital may also be spent on other politicians, not just members of the public.The goodwill is a kind of invisible political currency that lawmakers can use to mobilize the electorate or spend on policy reform" (MBN, 2023; see also Birner and Wittmer, 2003).
Some definitions are however much more narrowed down to, for example, political connections of firms (Kostovetsky, 2015;Siegel, 2007), connections in institutional domains (Nee and Opper, 2010), the capital stock of a business leader (Gratton et al., 2022), or the network competences of entrepreneurs obtaining bank loans (Zhou, 2009).In the same vein, a prevailingly 'tangible' definition is found in Norris and Franklin (1997, 187) who talk about "all the assets which facilitate a political career [of a politician] such as a record of party service, financial resources, and political networks", besides individual politicians' motivation and amount of time invested in the political field (Norris and Franklin, 1997, 204).In contrast, the symbolic power aspect strongly impacts the definition proposed by French (2011, 215): "Political capital is constituted by the store of mostly intangible assets which politicians use to induce compliance from other power holders, such as leaders in business, labour, the professions, the media and civil society, and from other specifically political actors, including those in their own political movement, and notably in the case of presidents and prime ministers, from their own close colleagues and appointees".
Hence, we see that there is confusion, or contestation, about the exact meaning of 'political capital'.To assess stocks of political capital in specifically rural communities, however, we need to shift focus from political capital belonging to parties/politicians to their voters, in this case ordinary rural dwellers.Hence, and as mentioned, we follow Casey's (2008) definition.When using survey data at community level, it appears operationalizable, when we assume that various forms of capital are directed towards a specific political market (arena), hence transformed into political capital within the framework of this market."Political capital (…) is an amalgamation of capital types combined in various ways for specific political markets.It is market demand that shapes capital formation" (Casey, 2008, 2).We use five forms of capital (physical, human, economic, social, and symbolic capital), which we suggest are conducive to political capital, by us defined as the degree of influence local citizens have on political decisions that concern their own local area.These capital forms are similar to, but not identical with, Casey's seven forms.4

Previous studies on political capital in rural areas
The multiple capital framework has been used in several rural studies (e.g., Castle, 1998;Svendsen and Sørensen, 2007;Sørensen, 2018;Bosworth and Turner, 2018).However, except from one case (Emery and Flora, 2006), political capital has been excluded and, overall, is a somewhat neglected capital form, compared to, e.g., social, and cultural capital.
As mentioned, our contribution is to shed light on political capital in rural communities in a Western, democratic country.To our knowledge, such studies have yet not been undertaken.In contrast, we find a row of studies in non-European countries, such as Australia (McDonald et al., 2013), Kyrgyzstan (Satybaldieva, 2015), Indonesia (Utami and Cramer, 2020), Vietnam (Kim et al., 2022), and India (Baumann and Sinha, 2001).Most studies have however been done in China, all of them with a specific attention to the close interaction between political capital and other capital forms, such as social, cultural, and economic capital (Chai, 2014;Wang et al., 2016;He and Xie, 2022).
Overall, the term appears to be applied in countries with high inequality and low equality of opportunity.For example, in the Chinese political capital", namely institutional, human, social, economic, cultural, symbolic, and moral capital.Connecting political capital closely to the resources of politicians, in order to measure a politician's political capital by use of a scoring system, she operationalizes institutional capital as political party support of a candidate, party position, ideology, party advantage; cultural capital as regional constituency interests; and moral capital as public opinion.In a rural community setting as ours, institutional and moral capital did not appear relevant to include.By cultural capital, Pierre Bourdieu understood cultural products embedded in the human mind and body (dispositions within a 'habitus'), in educational qualifications (e.g., academic degrees), as well as in objects (books, instruments, machines, etc.), and closely associated with socialization and biographies and, thus, social class, taste, and social distinction (Bourdieu, 1986, 243ff.).This capital form we partially included in the form of human and physical capital.
studies, political capital is narrowly identified as rural elites (so-called village cadres) holding political power due to their membership of, and appointment within, the omnipresent Communist Party.This allows them to convert political capital into economic capital and, consequently, maintain or enlarge economic inequality in the single communities (see e. g., Chai, 2014, 36;Wang et al., 2016, 413;He and Xie, 2022, 2).

The multiple capital framework
In line with the abovementioned Chinese studies specifically, and with rural studies using multiple capital approaches generally (see, e.g., Emery and Flora, 2006;Svendsen and Sørensen, 2007;Sørensen, 2018;Bosworth and Turner, 2018), we analyze how political capital is related to other forms of capital.The multiple capital approach should be seen as an outcome of Bourdieu's (1986) bold outline of "A general theory of the economy of practices", the aim of which is "to grasp capital and profit in all their forms and to establish the laws whereby the different types of capital (…) change into one another" (Bourdieu, 1986, 243).This includes intangible forms of capital, as social, cultural, and symbolic capital.
The idea of intangible forms of capital can however be traced long back in the history of economic thought (see, e.g., Svendsen and Sørensen, 2007).For example, David Hume (1984Hume ( [1739]], 77, V) suggested that trust and efficient contracts enhance economic performance.Furthermore, it is often ignored that Adam Smith explained economic success by use of other terms than "self-interest", "laissez-faire" and "the invisible hand", while in fact he assumed that intangible assets such as faith, sense of justice, trust and trustworthiness play a crucial role (Evensky, 2011).For example, in The Wealth of Nations he suggested that "commerce and manufactures (…) can seldom flourish in any state in which there is not a certain degree of confidence in the justice of government" (Smith, 1976(Smith, [1776]], 910).In the beginning of the 20th century, Thorstein Veblen again took up intangibles as common norms, trust, and cooperative skills, which, although difficult to measure, should rightly be assessed as production factors of no less importance than tangibles and, accordingly, intangible assets should be included in economists' "definitions of the term 'capital'" (Veblen, 1908, 3).
The critique of the 'narrow' definition of capital continued in human capital theory during the 1950s and 1960s.This research agenda was founded by Theodore Schultz, who found that "it has been all too convenient in marginal productivity analysis to treat labour as it were a unique bundle of innate abilities that are whole free of capital" (Schultz, 1971, 4).
Later on, an even more radical methodological revolution was outlined by Bourdieu (1986), who envisioned a neocapital human science, in which visible and invisible forms of capital should be included at the same level in the analysis.He (re)defined "capital" as "accumulated labour in its materialized form or its ''incorporated'', embodied form", pointing at four 'stem forms' of capital, namely economic, cultural, social, and symbolic (Bourdieu, 1986, 241). 5  Having explained our theoretical framework, we now turn to data and methods.

Data sources
The study is based on data from two sources.The first is Statistics Denmark, which is the central authority on statistics in Denmark.From this source, data to measure economic capital and human capital at the parish level was acquired.The second is a national household survey called the Danish Rural-Urban Survey (DRUS), which we conducted in 2011/2012.From this source, data to measure political capital, physical capital, social capital, and symbolic capital at the parish level was extrapolated.
We conducted DRUS with the purpose of collecting information about rural and urban residents on a wide number of issues related to their living conditions, aspirations, values, and attitudes.The collection of data was done among Danish respondents aged 18 and above.Respondents were randomly selected within four geographical strata based on a rural district classification that divides the 98 Danish municipalities into four municipality groups depending on the degree to which they contain rural areas: peripheral municipalities, rural municipalities, intermediate municipalities, and town municipalities (Kristensen et al., 2006).The purpose of this stratified sampling design was to secure a reasonable number of responses from rural residents.

Main variables
As mentioned, political capital can be seen as a form of symbolic capital and, more specifically, a 'power credit'.By us it is measured via the survey question in DRUS: "In your assessment, how large an influence has the citizens in your local area on political decisions that concern your local area?"Respondents were asked to answer on a scale from 1 (no influence at all) to 10 (very large influence).
Table 1 shows how the other forms of capital were measured.For more information on DRUS and on the variables, see Sørensen (2018).

Identifying rural parishes
To identify rural parishes, we used the parish-based rural-urban categorization that was produced by the Danish Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Affairs (MHURA) in 2013.MHURA's categorization divides the parishes in Denmark into four types: 1) peripheral rural parish, 2) city near rural parish, 3) peripheral urban parish, and 4) city parish.The categorization is constructed around two dimensions.The first is the rural-urban dimension where the dividing line is whether at least half of the parish population lives in towns with less or more than 3000 inhabitants.The second is the periphery-center dimension where the dividing line is whether a given parish is located close to (less than a 30min drive) or farther away from the twelve largest towns in Denmark: Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, Aalborg, Esbjerg, Randers, Kolding, Horsens, Vejle, Roskilde, Herning, and Helsingør (Danish Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Affairs 2013, 9).These two dichotomous dimensions produced the four parish categories covering the total of 2161 parishes in Denmark: 1) peripheral rural parish (n = 929), 2) city near rural parish (n = 647), 3) peripheral urban parish (n = 139), and 4) city parish (n = 446).
DRUS contains data from respondents living in a total of 941 parishes in Denmark.The parish location of the respondent was obtained from Statistics Denmark who delivered the representative population extracts used to carry out the data collection.Based on the rural-urban classification mentioned above, the parishes in the sample are distributed as follows: 311 peripheral rural parishes, 201 city near rural parishes, 118 peripheral urban parishes, and 311 city parishes.Hence, in our analyses, we include the 512 rural parishes, which correspond to around a third of 5 At the most general level and inspired by Marx, Bourdieu (1986, 241) refers to capital as historically accumulated labour in either a materialized or embodied form: "Capital is accumulated labour (in its materialized form or its "incorporated", embodied form), which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labour".This stands partly in contrast to definitions within mainstream economics, whichinspired by Adam Smith's seminal definition of capital as "that part of man's stock which he expects to afford him revenue" -talk about assets (production factors) that allow for increased productivity.Most often, Bourdieu has included social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capital in his analyses.The concept of political capital has however been let out, which partly may be explained by Bourdieu himself using this concept rather loosely and ad hoc (Casey, 2008, 6).Nevertheless, the underuse of the most powerful form of capital, political capital, may surprise as, according to Bourdieu himself, capital and power "amounts to the same thing" (Bourdieu, 1986, 242).all rural parishes in Denmark.After correcting for missing values, the sample was reduced to 476 rural parishes, see Table A1 in the appendix.Of these, 288 are peripheral rural parishes, and 188 are city near rural parishes.Table 2 shows where the 476 rural parishes are located in relation to the municipality-based rural district classification that was mentioned above.Most of the rural parishes are located in peripheral and rural municipalities, but some are also located in intermediate and urban municipalities.

Statistical methods
To analyze how political capital relates to the other five forms of capital, we performed a linear regression analysis, using political capital as the dependent variable and physical, economic, human, social, and symbolic capital as the independent variables.
Further, to analyze the relationship between political capital in 2012 and population growth in the following years, we performed linear regression analyses for 11 periods following 2012 (the first being 2012-2013 and the last being 2012-2023).In the regression models, we adjusted for initial population size (number of inhabitants in parish) and initial population size squared.Due to agglomeration effects, initial population size should be positively related to future population growth.However, such future population growth may occur only up to a certain point where some parishes have reached a saturation point.One can imagine that such saturation point is reached when there is no more room for expanding the housing stock in the given parish, due to concentrated housing, restrictions to build on new plots, or restrictions to build taller buildings on existing plots.Therefore, we expected a reversed U-shaped relationship between initial population size and future population growth.This is why we included both a non-squared and a squared term for the initial parish population size.
To adjust for exogenous factors, we ran two different models.In the first model, we added municipality dummies, thus adjusting for municipality fixed effects.By adding municipality dummies, we found the effect of political capital while theoretically imagining that all parishes lie in the same municipality.In the second model, we did not include municipality dummies but instead other variables that adjust for exogenous factors.The main exogenous factors behind the population development in rural parish is the size of nearby cities and the distance from the parish to these cities.The cities will provide purchasing power, private and public services, and not least a job market for the inhabitants of the rural parishes.Accordingly, we added four types of variables.First, we included a dummy variable for whether the rural parish is a peripheral parish, coded 0, or a city near rural parish, coded 1, incorporating the distance factor, that is, whether the rural parish lies less or more than a 30-min drive away from one of the twelve largest cities in Denmark.Second, we included a categorical variable on which type of municipality the parish lies in, that is, either a peripheral municipality, a rural municipality, an intermediate municipality, or a town municipality.Third, we included the size of the largest city in the municipality where the rural parish lies.Fourth, we included a categorical variable that measures in which part of the country the parish is located.To this end, we used the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) 2 level regions in Denmark, of which there are five: North Denmark Region, Central Denmark Region, Region of Southern Denmark, Region Zealand, Capital Region of Denmark.
Some parishes have been merged or have had their borders changed since 2012, and therefore the number of observations included in the 11 regressions vary depending on the number of intact parishes in the given period.We obtained the parish-level population data from a publicly available database operated by Statistics Denmark, where the number of inhabitants is counted per January 1 in the given year, see Statistics Denmark, 2023.

Descriptive statistics
Descriptive statistics for all the capital variables are presented in Table 3.We note a substantial variation in all the variables.For economic capital, for example, there is a huge difference between the parish with the lowest median wealth per resident and the parish with the highest median wealth per resident.
Finally, Table 4 shows the descriptive statistics for the population data.Per January 1, 2012, the mean number of inhabitants in the 476 parishes was 1367 inhabitants ranging from small parishes with down to 107 inhabitants to larger parishes with up to 6235 inhabitants.Looking at the mean population growth rates, we can see that these are mostly deteriorating throughout the 2012-2023 period.Even though there is a negative mean population growth throughout all the periods, many single parishes experienced positive population growth rates.For example, during 2012-2023, 311 parishes had a population decline, while 143 parishes had a population increase.This produced a mean population growth rate of − 2.33% with a standard deviation of 11.10.Moreover, during this period, the minimum population growth rate was  − 28%, and the maximum population growth rate was 82%.

Do rural areas per se have little political power and influence?
Table 5 shows the distribution of the political capital variable across the rural parishes.As can be seen, there is a lot of variation in the data, and the data roughly follows a normal distribution.There are 7 rural parishes in the top category and 40 in the bottom category, while most rural parishes (n = 102) are found in the lower middle category.Hence, at this stage, we can already answer our first research question: Do rural areas per se have little political power and influence?The answer is no.There is a significant variation in the level of political capital across the rural parishes.Hence, rural areas are not per se 'places that don't matter', being without political power.
For comparative purposes, we have included urban parishes from the DRUS survey in Table 5.As expected, urban parishes seem to possess more political capital than rural parishes.This is apparent from Table 5, which shows the distribution in rural parishes to be more skewed to the low side than the distribution in urban parishes.The difference between rural and urban parishes is statistically significant.Thus, a χ 2 test turns out to be highly significant (χ 2 = 58.49,p < 0.001), and so does the γ test (γ = 0.22, p < 0.001).The latter test accepts that there is a trend in the data so that the frequency distribution in percent increases in urban parishes as compared to rural parishes as the political capital levels increase.The trend is highly significant, even though rural parishes have slightly higher shares in the three top categories (6.7%, 2.1%, 1.5% versus 6.3%, 0.5%, 0.3%).

What makes some rural areas have more political capital than others?
Table 6 shows the correlations between the forms of capital.The first column shows a significant, positive correlation between political capital and all the other forms of capital.This is in accordance with Bourdieu's original assumption that symbolic powerof which political capital should be seen as a manifestationstems from the other forms of capital, not least economic, symbolic, and cultural capital, the latter by us operationalized solely as human capital (Bourdieu, 1979, 80).Notably, none of the other forms of capital have a statistically significant relationship with all other forms of capital.This indicates that political capital is, in the wordings of Casey (2008), derived from the other forms of capital, that is, an amalgamation.
Notice that Table 6 also shows a strong correlation among the independent variables.For example, and not surprisingly, there is a strong positive correlation between economic capital and human capital.To unravel these connections, it is necessary to conduct multiple regression analyses.
Table 7 shows the result of the regression analysis, and we see that political capital is indeed significantly related to all the other forms of capital.The significance is strongest in relation to symbolic capital.This does not come as a surprise, as symbolic power arguably lies at the core of both political and symbolic capital.All forms of capital are significant at least at the 5% significance level.
At first glance, the adjusted R 2 seems to be on the low side.However, the measurements of political, physical, social, and symbolic capital are based on the response of only one respondent in 339 out of the 476 cases.Out of these four types of capital, especially the measurement of political capital contains some imprecision since residents may have quite varying levels of insight into the level of political influence of their parish.Bearing this in mind, the reported adjusted R 2 seems satisfactory.In fact, given the imprecision in the measurement of political capital, the finding of highly significant coefficients accentuates and speaks in favor of the model's explanatory power.
The correlation among independent variables could have led to multicollinearity in the regression analysis.To check whether multicollinearity constitutes a problem, variance inflation factor (VIF) multicollinearity tests were performed on the regression in Table 7.The VIFs for single independent variables ranged between 1.05 and 1.36.The common rule of thumb is that multicollinearity is present if the VIF of a  Note: To make the most appropriate comparison, we only included urban parishes that had no missing values in the five other capitals (n = 395).This criterion was also used for the rural parishes (n = 476).
J.F.L. Sørensen and G.L.H. Svendsen single variable exceeds 10 (Gujarati, 2003, 362).Thus, the regression analyses do not seem to suffer from problems of multicollinearity.

Does political capital influence the local population development in rural areas?
As mentioned in the methods section, we employ two different regression models to investigate the relationship between political capital in 2012 and the population development in the rural parishes in the following years from 2012 and onwards.The first model incorporates municipality fixed effects to adjust for exogenous factors, whereas the second incorporates four variables related to distance and population size at the parish, municipality, and regional level.The results of the two models are shown in Table 8 and Table 9, respectively.The first model in Table 8 is our preferred model, because it produces the highest adjusted R 2 values, and thus has the higher explanatory power, see Tables 8 and 9 As can be seen in Table 8, the level of political capital in 2012 has a positive and significant effect on the population growth during the following periods: 2012-2016, 2012-2017, 2012-2018, 2012-2019, 2012-2020, and 2012-2023.Thus, political capital in 2012 has a significant effect on the subsequent population development with a time lag of around four years.After nine years, two periods follow with no relationship between political capital and population growth, that is, no significant relationship between the level of political capital in 2012 and the population growth in the periods 2012-2021 and 2012-2022.These two periods of non-effect may be linked to the COVID-19 pandemic that might have caused people to postpone planned migration decisions.This goes well with the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic started in early 2020 and that Denmark had lockdown measures in place to curb the pandemic from March 2020 to September 2021 (Sørensen and Christiansen, 2023).Hence, during the last period from 2012 to 2023, that is, from January 1, 2012, to January 1, 2023, we again find a significant relationship between political capital in 2012 and population growth.
That the relationship between political capital in 2012 and population growth from 2012 onwards gets weaker over time is not surprising, since the level of political capital is likely to change over time due to changes in the population composition in the single parish.Changes in the parish population composition over time comes from in-and outmigration and through natural growth in terms of births and deaths.For example, by 2023, some of the people who had been vital in creating a high level of political capital in a parish in 2012 may have moved away or may have died.In this case, the level of political capital would have decreased in the parish, all things equal, and therefore, by 2023, the high level of political capital in 2012 has a reduced influence on the population development in the parish.Having said that, finding a significant relation between political capital in 2012 and population growth 11 years after indicates a strong and 'sticky' (i.e., long-term) impact of political capital at a given time on future population growth.
In Table 9, we observe that the effect of political capital on the population development is less pronounced than in Table 8.There is a positive and significant effect at the 10% significance level during the periods 2012-2016, 2012-2017, 2012-2018, and 2012-2019.As mentioned, the first model in Table 8 is our preferred model, because of the higher adjusted R 2 , and therefore we consider the results of the first model to be our main results.Notwithstanding, it is interesting to observe in Table 9 that the included explanatory variables get the expected results.Thus, city near rural parishes have achieved a better population development than peripheral rural parishes, and the population development is better the larger the largest city in the home municipality and the more urbanized the home municipality.

Conclusion
For decades, many rural communities have suffered from population decline and cutbacks in public service.This may lead to territorial inequality and widespread discontent among rural residents, which again may influence voting behavior and ultimately threaten democracies (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018, 2020).Hence, important questions become: Do rural areas per se have little political power and influence?What makes some rural areas have more political capital than others?Does local political capital influence the local development in rural areas?By answering these questions, we may gain insights into how to facilitate rural communities to be empowered by achieving more political capital, broadly understood as resources that legitimately can be used to influence political outcomes that benefit the single rural community.
Studies of the importance of political capital in rural areas are rare, and no studies have been undertaken in democratic, Western countries.Therefore, we believed that Denmarka country with high urbanization rates in recent yearswas an interesting case to study.Inspired by Bourdieu (1986), and following Casey (2008), we defined political capital as a function of other capital forms, directed towards the political market.In this understanding, local (parish) political capital inheres in a rural area's 'total stock' of physical, human, economic, social, and symbolic capital.Together, these capital formswhen adapted to, and directed towards, the political arenacan be used to obtain political goals, including political support and economic subsidies.Using data from a 2011/2011 survey (n = 2000) covering 476 Danish rural parishes, we measured our dependent variable of political capital by asking respondents to assess how much influence local citizens exert on political decisions that concern their own, local area.
We have three main findings.First, we find a significant variation in the level of political capital across the rural parishes.Hence, rural areas are not per se 'left behind places' and 'places that don't matter', being without political power.Second, we find that the local stocks of five forms of capital (physical, economic, human, social, symbolic) are positively related to the level of local political capital.Of the six forms of capital under investigation, only political capital shows a significant relationship with all the five other forms of capital.This indicates that political capital is an amalgamation of capitals in rural parishes.Finally, we find that the level of political capital has a positive and 'sticky' (i.e.,

Table 9
Relating population growth to initial political capital, initial population numbers and exogenous factors.long-term) effect on rural population growth.These three findings hold important lessons for policies seeking to improve the conditions for 'left behind places' and 'places that don't matter'.Overall, they strike a positive note by showing that if the local stocks of capital are improved, political capital will also be enhanced, securing favorable outcomes for the single rural communities in a virtuous circle, including promoting demographic sustainability and potentially curbing the anti-democratic movements.This is not to say that enhancing local capabilities alone can turn around population and employment declines in rural areas.After all, political capital only explained a minor part of the population development in our analysis, whereas exogenous factors explained the by far largest part.Hence, our findings support the argument made by, for example, Westlund and Borsekova (2023) that endogenous development cannot be a fix all solution to the problems of rural areas.
Further, as Elinor Ostrom (1992, 29) has pointed out, it should also be remembered that, for rural residents to be able to capitalize on their community stock of capital and, thus, provide for collective goods, "coordination is needed".Coordination is important, because it is a precondition for establishing mutual rules of cooperation, shared learning, and division of labour (Ostrom, 1992, 30).Moreover, for this to succeed, meeting places are needed, for example in the form of assembly houses, or multifunctional centers (Svendsen, 2010).Hence, municipalities may consider financing, co-financing and/or helping rural communities to apply for funding to build 'the heart of the community' in the form of community centers that contain meeting rooms, sports facilities, concert stage, shops, postal office, library, school, and the like.In this way, through local and extra-local social networks (social capital), human, economic, and physical capital is utilized in an optimal way, leading to improved place reputation (symbolic capital) and, ultimately, more political capital, to the benefit of all community members.This is the first systematic study of political capital in rural areas within a multiple capital framework.Further studies should include both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the creation of political capital and its interrelationship with other, important forms of capital within rural communities, as well as its overall impact on population development.Such studies may lead to improved rural policies that can contribute to empower, and enhance the resilience of, the single local communities.

Declaration of competing interest
No conflict of interest.

Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1. "Political capital", hits 1900-2021.Search in Google Scholar, May 11, 2023.Note: All types of articles, incl.quotes.The count for 2022 is not final and therefore not included in the figure.

Table 1
Variables and definitions.
people good at helping each other in community).Measured on a scale from 1 (highly disagree) to 5 (highly agree).A composite scale variable for the five variables was generated (Cronbach's α = 0.69).Extracted from DRUS 2011/2012.Symbolic capitalResponse to the question: "How much status do you think is attached to living where you live?".Measured on a scale from 1 (none at all) to 10 (very high status).Extracted from DRUS 2011/ 2012.Note: DRUS: Danish Rural-Urban Survey.The data was measured as of January 1, 2012.

Table 2
Number of rural parishes in sample by parish type and by the type of municipality in which the parish is located (n = 476).

Table 4
Descriptive statistics for population data.

Table 5
Political capital: Frequency distribution.

Table 7
Relating political capital to other forms of capital in rural parishes.

Table 8
Relating population growth to initial political capital and initial population numbers while controlling for municipality fixed effects.