This thesis contributes to the comprehension of how certain strategies carried out by those in power- such as fiscal policies or the implementation of public spending- usually have side effects, not a priori contemplated in the approval of those policies and finally affect individuals’ voting decisions or their propensity to get involved in riots.
Chapter one analyzes the context of the military dictatorship in Spain, when dictator Franco ordered the construction of different types of infrastructure, especially reservoirs and dams. That served the far-right public to defend the figure of Franco over the years. This chapter finds that places with dams built by the regime exhibit a lower political support for right-wing parties during bad times, i.e. when municipalities are hit by unemployment shocks. We believe that, even though it has been emphasized the positive effects of those constructions, the expected positive impact on political parties has vanished due to the use of forced labor to build them. Interestingly, we demonstrate that the effects vanish when we examine the support for left-wing political parties or dams built after the Franco era, so our results are only due to constructions made by the autocratic regime.
Chapter two, coauthored with Dominic Rohner and Alessandro Saia, investigates the effect of fiscal duties on revolts. We know that taxation may trigger social unrest, as highlighted by historical examples. At the same time, tax income could boost state capacity which may, in turn, foster political stability. Understanding the a priori ambiguous taxation-turmoil nexus is particularly relevant for low-income countries today – yet causal evidence on the topic is very scarce. Using a regression discontinuity design, we exploit a unique policy experiment in 19th century Sicily to identify the effect of taxation on social unrest. It turns out that it is mostly the threat of taxation that may distort economic investment and ultimately result in greater political turmoil.
Chapter three, coauthored with Dominic Rohner and Alessandro Saia, analyzes how different dimensions of democracy might impact the propensity to engage on violent conflict or protests. Democracy is composed of a variety of institutional rules, some of which may be key to promote peace and others neutral at best. Hence, it is of foremost salience to understand what types of democratic arrangements promote peace in contexts of political tensions. In this chapter we start off from a simple game-theoretic model of proportional versus majoritarian representation and then test the key implications of the model, exploiting a unique natural experiment in Cameroon. We find that moving to proportional representation dampens the risk of "violence" (armed conflict) and promotes instead "voice" (peaceful protests).