What Are You Voting For? Proximity to Refugee Reception Centres and Voting in the 2016 Italian Constitutional Referendum

Massimiliano Bratti, Claudio Deiana (), Enkelejda Havari, Gianluca Mazzarella and Elena Meroni ()

No 11060, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In December 2016, the Italian electorate voted for a referendum on crucial constitutional reform promoted by the governing party. The official aims of the reform were both to improve the country’s governability and stability and to simplify the institutional setup. Despite not strictly being a political vote, the referendum was largely perceived as an assessment of the Prime Minister’s work and the activity of his government. Using Italian municipality data, we provide novel empirical evidence on the impact of geographical proximity to refugee reception centres on voting behaviour. Our analysis demonstrates that being closer to refugee centres increased (1) the referendum turnout and (2) the proportion of anti-government votes. This evidence is consistent with the fact that the main opposition parties exploited the anti-immigration sentiments that were mounting in the population to influence people’s voting.

Keywords: voting; refugee reception centres; referendum; proximity; Constitution; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 P16 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cta, nep-eur, nep-geo, nep-mig and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published - revised version published as 'Geographical proximity to refugee reception centres and voting' in: Journal of Urban Economics, 2020, 120, 103290

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