Organized Crime, Violence, and Politics

Alberto Alesina, Salvatore Piccolo () and Paolo Pinotti

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: We investigate how criminal organizations strategically use violence to influence elections in order to get captured politicians elected. The model offers novel testable implications about the use of pre-electoral violence under different types of electoral systems and different degrees of electoral competition. We test these implications by exploiting data on homicide rates in Italy since 1887, comparing the extent of “electoral-violence cycles” between areas with a higher and lower presence of organized crime, under democratic and non-democratic regimes, proportional and majoritarian elections, and between contested and non-contested districts. We provide additional evidence on the influence of organized crime on politics using parliamentary speeches of politicians elected in Sicily during the period 1945-2013.

Keywords: organized crime; electoral violence; voting; political discourse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-03-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-law and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Forthcoming in Review of Economic Studies

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.csef.it/WP/wp433.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Organized Crime, Violence, and Politics (2019)
Working Paper: Organized Crime, Violence, and Politics (2016)
Working Paper: Organized Crime, Violence, and Politics (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:433

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