Political Participation and Competition in Concurrent Elections: Evidence from Italy

Federico Fabio Frattini
Additional contact information
Federico Fabio Frattini: Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

No 2025.15, Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Abstract: This paper investigates how concurrent national and local elections affect the local political participation and competition. Leveraging a quasi-experimental framework provided by Italy’s staggered electoral timing, the paper employs a difference-in-differences design. Estimates reveal that municipalities holding concurrent elections exhibit lower levels of local participation and competition. Moreover, the concurrent election increases participation by candidates with nationally-established parties, while decreases participation with independent parties. This further translates into a higher votes share for nationally-established parties and a consequent higher probability of election. Elected mayors tend to have lower education and experience in office, while they are more likely to be from the municipality they were elected in. Further, elected mayors are able to attract more intergovernmental transfers, without substantially affecting local spending patterns.

Keywords: Concurrent elections; Political Competition; Political Participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://feem-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/w ... loads/NDL2025-15.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fem:femwpa:2025.15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alberto Prina Cerai ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).