Forging political entrepreneurs: Civil war effects on post-conflict politics in Italy

• We study the effects of civil war on post-conflict vote choice in democracies.
• We show that incumbents' violence increases electoral support for the opposition.
• We show that the conversion of armed groups in parties has even a stronger effect.
• We present a new, highly disaggregated dataset based on historical data.

How does violent mobilization affect post-conflict elections? This article studies the impact that violent collective mobilization has on local electoral behavior after domestic conflict. We argue that post-conflict democratic politics at the local level can be dramatically affected by local experience of civil war. The use of violence during the war and especially local political entrepreneurs who have emerged from the conflict can influence post-violent politics. We use as case-study the civil war that took place in Italy during the last phase of World War II. Using new spatially disaggregated data on armed groups' location and violent episodes, we assess the impact of the violent mobilization on the 1946 elections, which took place after the conflict. We find that partisans' mobilization and, more weakly, Nazi-Fascist violent acts influenced local politics, shifting votes towards more radical positions. Our findings hold across numerous robustness checks.