Historical Roots of Political Extremism: The Effects of Nazi Occupation of Italy

Monday, April 3, 2017
11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
(Pacific)
Graham Stuart Lounge
Department of Political Science, Encina Hall West, 616 Serra St., Room 400, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Speaker: 
  • Guido Tabellini

The Italian civil war and the Nazi occupation of Italy occurred at a critical juncture, just before the birth of a new democracy and when, for the first time in a generation, Italians were choosing political affiliations and forming political identities. In this paper we study how these traumatic events shaped the new political system. We exploit geographic heterogeneity in the intensity and duration of the civil war, and the persistence of the battlefront along the “Gothic line” cutting through Northern-Central Italy. We find that the Communist Party gained votes in the post-war elections where the Nazi occupation and the civil war lasted longer, mainly at the expense of the centrist and catholic parties. This effect persists until the early 1990s. Evidence also suggests that this is due to an effect on political attitudes. Thus, the foreign occupation and the civil war left a lasting legacy of political extremism and polarization on the newborn Italian democracy.

Guido Tabellini is the Intesa Sanpaolo Chair in Political Economics at Universita' Bocconi.

This seminar is part of the Comparative Politics Workshop in the Department of Political Science and is co-sponsored by The Europe Center.