Democratic Involvement and Immigrants' Compliance with the Law

Michaela Slotwinski, Alois Stutzer and Cédric Gorinas ()

No 10550, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: Many people are concerned about societal cohesion in the face of higher numbers of foreigners migrating to Western democracies. The challenge for the future is to find and adopt institutions that foster integration. We investigate how the right to vote in local elections affects immigrants' compliance with the law. In our study for Denmark, we exploit an institutional regulation that grants foreigners local voting rights after three years of stay. Relying on register data, we find causal evidence that the first possibility to vote considerably reduces the number of legal offenses of non-Western male immigrants in the time after elections.

Keywords: migration; voting rights; immigrant integration; crime; RDD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 J15 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-mig and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Democratic Involvement and Immigrants’ Compliance with the Law (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10550

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