The Political Cost of Being Soft on Crime: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Arbeitspapier

We provide evidence about voters' response to crime control policies. We exploit a natural experiment arising from the Italian 2006 collective pardon releasing about one third of the prison population. The pardon created idiosyncratic incentives to recidivate across released individuals and municipalities. We show that municipalities where resident pardoned individuals have a higher incentive to recidivate experienced higher recidivism. Moreover, in these municipalities: i) newspapers were more likely to report crime news involving pardoned individuals; ii) voters held worse beliefs on the incumbent governments ability to control crime and iii) with respect to the previous elections, the incumbent national government experienced a worse electoral performance in the April 2008 national elections relative to the opposition coalition. Overall, our findings indicate that voters keep incumbent politicians accountable by conditioning their vote on the observed effects of their policies.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 10858

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
• Thema: accountability ; voting ; natural experiment ; crime ; recidivism

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Drago, Francesco ; Galbiati, Roberto ; Sobbrio, Francesco
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (wo): Bonn
• (wann): 2017

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/170842
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ