The Effect of Far-Right Parties on the Location Choice of Immigrants: Evidence from Lega- Nord Mayors Emanuele Bracco, Maria De Paola, Colin Green, Vincenzo Scoppa Lancaster University, Università della Calabria 1
Motivation Immigration is an area of increasing political focus Rise of parties where immigration is a core platform There is increasing evidence that the presence of immigrants affects the electoral success of these parties • We explore the opposite dynamic: • Do Immigrants react to these parties? Are their choices affected by the presence of an anti-immigration mayor? • We focus on the case of municipal elections in Northern Italy. This region has seen the ascent of a party with a core anti-immigration political platform, Lega Nord 2
Existing Literature • Existing literature has analyzed how the presence of immigrants affects political preferences: • Mayda (2005): attitudes towards immigration depend on one’s level of skills, and the skills of immigrants • Russo (2010): theoretical model of voting on immigration policy • Friebel et al. (2013): emigration decision affected by xenophobic attacks in destination country. • Barone et al (2014): immigration increases votes to centre-right (but not in big cities) • Halla et al. (2014), Otto and Steinhardt (2014), Sekeris and Vasilakis (2016): immigration increases votes to anti-immigration parties 3
Identification strategy: RDD • It is hard to disentangle the effect of electing a mayor supported by an anti immigration party on the location decisions of immigrants • Strong correlation between immigration and influx of immigrants • Causality goes in both directions • We know how areas with more immigration see a rise in anti- immigration parties (Barone et al. 2016) • To address this we use Regression Discontinuity Design: look at municipalities where the Lega-Nord-supported mayor won/lost by a small margin • Assumption is that this generates a quasi-experimental setup in which treatment (being subjected to a Lega Nord mayor) can be considered as quasi-random 4
Background: Lega Nord • Anti-immigration, pro-federalism (at times pro-secession), anti-establishment (anti-Rome!) party born in the Eighties • After the collapse of “old” political system in early Eighties, gains power (elects the Mayor of Milan in 1993) • Subsequent unstable alliance with centre-right (Berlusconi) parties • Gains votes in Northern Italy, esp. Lombardy and Veneto. • Between 5 and 15% of (national) votes, but first party in many areas (esp. Veneto) 5
Background: Municipal Elections • Directly elected mayors, by plurality ( < 15k inhabits.) or runoff ( > 15k inhabits) • Mayors are partisan • City council elected together with mayor through a open-list proportional representation • Electoral system is such that mayor always has a majority in the city council • Balance of power Mayor-Council is strongly tipped in favour of the Mayor 6
Data • Data from 4,000 municipalities in Northern Italy (Piemonte, Lombardia, Liguria, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Emilia- Romagna [no Lega Nord presence in Valle d’Aosta or Trentino- Alto Adige]). • From Interior Ministry (elections from 1997): • Data on mayoral elections including parties linked to each mayoral candidate • From ISTAT: data on population and immigration, data on geographic and economic characteristics • From Finance Ministry: average taxable income • Data from local councils’ balance sheets on expenditures in social services 7
Identifying Lega-Nord mayors • Lega: any mayoral candidate who is supported by Lega Nord, as from the electoral data • (Lega2): Lega+ any mayoral candidate who is supported by a centre-right coalition (“CEN - DES”) in small (plurality, single- list) municipalities • (Lega3): Lega Nord only if the LN member was the mayoral candidate or deputy mayor. • We probably lose some “Lista Civica ” mayors who are actually Lega Nord (downward bias in our estimate) • We cannot distinguish easily the intensity of Lega Nord presence (noise in our estimates?) 8
Margin of Victory • Votes to the mayoral winning candidate − votes to the runner- up • Second-round votes used when there is a second round • First-round votes used otherwise • Results materially unaffected if we discard municipalities that go to a second round • Too few municipalities go to a second round to do the opposite. 9
Controls • Population • # employed people in agriculture/industry/trade/transport as a share of employed people • Area of municipality, dummy for urban munic., above-sea level • Education (avg years of education of adults) • Average taxable income 10
Three maps: regions where Lega Nord runs 11
Three maps: municipalities where Lega Nord runs 12
Three maps: municipalities where Lega- Nord rules 13
Immigration Data For each year/municipality we know: # of newly registered foreigners coming from other municipalities # of cancelled foreigners going to other municipalities # of newly registered foreigners coming from abroad # of cancelled foreigners going abroad Create variables for net inflow (registered-cancelled), and divide these by the population. “Inflow from abroad” may hide previously illegal immigrants getting their papers 14
Regression Discontinuity Design and in its non-parametric version: 15
Regression sample and summary statistics 16
• A standard concern with this type of identification strategy is that other relevant characteristics may also vary discontinuously with respect to the margin of victory. • We focus on observed characteristics and test whether a discontinuity is present in any of these variables when a Lega Nord Mayor is elected. 17
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Histogram of Margin of Victory 19
Regression: Total Net Flows, Parametric 20
Results: Net Flow — Non-Parametric (CCT) Optimal Bandwidth à la CCT: ±15.25% 21
Scatterplot by LegaNord 22
Inflows and Outflows 23
Robustness check: Alternative Lega Nord Measures 24
Immediate and lagged effects
Falsification check 26
New mayors and incumbents 27
Social expenditures Do immigrants run away from more selective public good provision / stricter policing? Is LegaNord-mayor just an instrument for attitudes towards immigrants? 28
Conclusion Evidence that immigrants’ location choice is affected by Lega - Nord Mayors They don’t flee, but they may choose other locations (mostly through fewer inflows from other municipalities) Where do they go instead? Do they just move locally? Is there any (sound) way to disentangle these two mechanisms? 29
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