The Electoral Impact of Wealth Redistribution: Evidence from the Italian Land Reform

Caprettini, Bruno; Casaburi, Lorenzo; Venturini, Miriam

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3767181

Cited by 6 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…The most common explanation is that the ruling Christian Democrats feared instability—predominantly in southern Italy—and pursued land reform in order to mitigate the most severe social and political grievances (Belotti, 1960; Kapstein, 2017). Relatedly, several authors argue that the Christian Democrats saw land reform as an opportunity to undercut the appeal of communists by directly delivering land to rural workers and thereby capture greater vote share while averting a political alliance between rural and urban workers (Caprettini et al, 2021; Rossi-Doria, 1958). Furthermore, land reform could be used to stem a potential flood of migrants to urban areas in the industrializing north (King, 1973).…”

Section: Land Reform In Italymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Popular demand for land was substantial: applications typically outstripped available land (Prinzi, 1956). Most successful applicants came from the same local towns where land was expropriated (Rossi-Doria, 1958, cited in Caprettini et al, 2021). Land grants were assigned in two forms: as plots intended to be self-sufficient farms ( podere ), often around 5–6 hectares in size, and as smaller units intended to supplement income from other sources ( quota ).…”

Section: Land Reform In Italymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is not to say that all of the land reform zonal boundaries were ultimately orthogonal to political, social, or economic factors. Caprettini et al (2021) point out that the ruling Christian Democrats deliberated extensively on the delimitation of zonal boundaries in southern Italy in particular, ostensibly out of concern with communism in the region. These authors also note that some accounts document cases in which southern landowners lobbied the government to exclude their locales from the land reform zones.…”

Section: Italy’s Land Reform Zonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I therefore constructed a variable for the change in the share of a municipality’s farms in the 2–10 hectare category based on data from the 1945–46 census digitized by Caprettini et al (2021) and data I digitized from the 1970 agricultural census.…”

Section: Data and Research Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Areas that experienced greater land reform are comparatively more underdeveloped today than otherwise similar areas that experienced less land reform. The approach in this paper is similar to the pre-existing work by Caprettini et al (2021) who use a geographic discontinuity approach to examine the political consequences of Italy’s land reform for the Christian Democratic party that ruled at the time of the land reform. These authors also focus on the Maremma zone as well as Delta Podano, a reform zone in northern Italy.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Persistence of Rural Underdevelopment: Evidence from Land Reform in Italy

Albertus

2022

Comparative Political Studies

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Patchiness in rural development remains a salient feature of many developed and developing countries that have struggled historically to overcome enormous national disparities in economic structure and well-being. This paper examines how one major, explicit rural policy ostensibly aimed at rural advancement—land reform—can impact uneven development in the countryside. It does so in Italy, where a major land reform redistributed large landholdings to individual peasant families after World War II. Based on original fine-grained data on land redistribution and a geographical regression discontinuity analysis that takes advantage of Italy’s zonal land reform approach, I find that greater land reform fueled comparative underdevelopment and precarity locally over the long term. Several related mechanisms delayed development in land reform zones: a slower transition out of agriculture, lower labor mobility, and an aging demographic. These are generalizable mechanisms that could operate in other cases of land reform beyond Italy.

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Section: Land Reform In Italymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Land Reform In Italymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Italy’s Land Reform Zonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Data and Research Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Persistence of Rural Underdevelopment: Evidence from Land Reform in Italy

Albertus

2022

Comparative Political Studies

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Fascistville: Mussolini’s new towns and the persistence of neo-fascism

Carillo

2022

J Econ Growth

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This paper explores the link between infrastructures built by autocratic regimes and political values in the wake of the transition to democracy and in the long run. In Fascist Italy (1922–43), Mussolini founded 147 “New Towns” (Città di Fondazione). Exploring municipality-level data before and after their construction, I document (1) that the New Towns enhanced local electoral support for the Fascist Party and (2) that the effect persisted through democratization, enhancing local support for Italy’s neo-fascist party, which endured until recent times. Placebo estimates of New Towns planned but not built and spatial regression discontinuity design both support a causal interpretation of this pattern. Survey respondents near the New Towns currently exhibit preferences for a stronger leader in politics, for nationalism, and for the fascists as such. The effect is greater for individuals who lived under the Fascist Regime and is transmitted across generations inside the family. The findings suggest that authoritarian leaders may exploit public investment programs to induce a favorable view of their ideology, which persists across institutional transitions and over the long term.

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The Making of Social Democracy: the Economic and Electoral Consequences of Norway’s 1936 Folk School Reform

Acemoglu,

Pekkarinen,

Salvanes

et al. 2024

Journal of the European Economic Association

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Upon assuming power for the first time in 1935, the Norwegian Labour Party delivered on its promise for a major schooling reform. The reform raised minimum instruction time in less developed rural areas and boosted the resources available to rural schools, reducing class size and raising teacher salaries. We show that cohorts more intensively affected by the reform increased their education and experienced higher labor income. Our main result is that the schooling reform also boosted support for the Norwegian Labour Party in subsequent elections. This additional support persisted for several decades and was pivotal in maintaining support for the social democratic coalition in Norway. These results are not driven by the direct impact of education and are not explained by higher turnout, or greater attention or resources from the Labour Party targeted towards the municipalities most affected by the reform. Rather, our evidence suggests that cohorts that benefited from the schooling reform, and their parents, rewarded the party for delivering a major reform that was beneficial to them.

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The Electoral Impact of Wealth Redistribution: Evidence from the Italian Land Reform

Cited by 6 publications

References 56 publications

The Persistence of Rural Underdevelopment: Evidence from Land Reform in Italy

The Persistence of Rural Underdevelopment: Evidence from Land Reform in Italy

Fascistville: Mussolini’s new towns and the persistence of neo-fascism

The Making of Social Democracy: the Economic and Electoral Consequences of Norway’s 1936 Folk School Reform

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