Analysing the territorial roots of discontent: between anger and silent protests

In analyses of the contemporary electoral landscape, one phenomenon has been garnering increasing attention: protest behaviour and political disengagement. Recent literature has primarily focused on examining these processes through the perspective of voting for populist parties. However, there have been only a few studies that have delved into other forms of protest. The objective of our study is to surpass the limited scope of populist votes and instead concentrate on alternative types of protest behaviour. Specifically, we aim to compare two distinct manifestations of discontent: the Yellow Vest demonstrations and abstentionism. Our viewpoint is that both the Yellow Vest movement and electoral abstentionism are expressions of rejection stemming from the margins. However, they manifest in different ways – violent demonstrations on one hand, and widespread abstentionism on the other. Our goal is to ascertain whether these two behaviours reflect the same patterns of marginalisation and disillusionment, or if they correspond to different territorial dynamics. To achieve this goal, we have conducted an econometric analysis on the scale of French employment zones, utilising socio-economic and spatial data.