Harvesting Votes: The Electoral Effects of the Italian Land Reform

Bruno Caprettini, Lorenzo Casaburi () and Miriam Venturini
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Lorenzo Casaburi: Universität Zürich - Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakutält

No 202408, Working Papers from University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics

Abstract: Governments often implement large-scale redistribution policies to gain enduring political support. However, little is known on whether such policies generate sizable gains, whether these gains are persistent, and why. We study the political consequences of a major land reform in Italy. A panel spatial regression discontinuity design shows that the reform generated large electoral gains for the incumbent Christian Democratic party. The electoral effects persist over four decades. We explore several channels and find that clientelist brokering and patronage are plausible mechanisms for this persistence.

Keywords: redistribution; voting; clientelism; land reform; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 N44 P16 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cdm, nep-eur, nep-his and nep-pol
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https://economics.ucr.edu/repec/ucr/wpaper/202408.pdf First version, 2023 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Redistribution, Voting and Clientelism: Evidence from the Italian Land Reform (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucr:wpaper:202408

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