Religious Mobilization and the Selection of Political Elites: Evidence from Postwar Italy

Three key characteristics of effective electoral mobilizers have been identified in the literature: reputation, embeddedness in the local community, and the ability to reward and sanction voters. Religious leaders may possess all these characteristics. Can they favor their preferred candidates? Using a novel data set of connections between politicians and Italian Catholic bishops throughout the twentieth century, I conduct the first quantitative assessment of the electoral returns of personal connections to a religious leader. Leveraging the timing of bishops’ nominations within a difference-in-differences strategy, I estimate that bishops born in the electoral district yield a 27% increase in the individual preference votes for their connected candidate. Additional analyses point to the provision of campaign opportunities as the main mechanism driving the effect. These findings suggest that religious authorities can use their local embeddedness to mobilize voters, eventually influencing the selection of representatives in democratic systems.