Law enforcement and political participation: Italy, 1861-65

Antonio Accetturo, Matteo Bugamelli () and Andrea Lamorgese
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Matteo Bugamelli: Bank of Italy

No 1124, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: Does tougher law enforcement positively affect political participation? This paper addresses this question, which hinges upon the causal impact of formal institutions on informal ones, by using a historical event from 19th century Italy. This event was the Pica Law, which was introduced in 1863 to fight a surge of criminal violence in Southern Italy and to ensure a safer environment for wealthy people, the only ones allowed to vote at that time. Our main finding, obtained using a spatial regression discontinuity technique in a diff-in-diffs framework, is that voter turnout greatly increased in those areas where the Pica Law was applied, compared with bordering and otherwise similar areas. This result is confirmed by a number of robustness checks and placebo exercises and turns out to be persistent over time.

Keywords: turnout; electoral results; spatial discontinuity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 R5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-his, nep-law and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Journal Article: Law enforcement and political participation: Italy, 1861–65 (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1124_17

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