This session of the Political Behaviour Colloquium features a presentation by Massimo Pulejo (University of Milan).
Organised criminal groups pose enormous threats to states' legitimacy, and their eradication requires the active collaboration of citizens. Can successful state interventions foster civic mobilization against organized crime? And, if yes, through which mechanisms? To answer these questions, this project proposes two studies – one observational and one experimental – of the effect of Italy's crackdowns on mafia groups on citizens' willingness to stand against organized crime. For the observational component of the study, I build two novel data sets. The first – digitizing the reports of the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia – records the universe of 3,419 operations (both arrests and seizures of mafia property) conducted between 2015 and 2023. The second collects information on all the events sponsored on the Facebook pages of 487 anti-mafia NGOs in the same period. This amounts to 5,491 events, taking place in 545 unique municipalities, with information on the exact date, address, and number of interested and participating users of each event.
Given the high frequency of both sets of data, I use a Regression Discontinuity in Time design to gauge whether the attendance to anti-mafia events in a given municipality is different in the days immediately after a crackdown, compared to those immediately before. The results reveal that successful interventions against the mafia boost civic participation to antimafia initiatives by about 37%. However, this effect is short-lived, as attendance reverts to the pre-crackdown level within a week. Heterogeneity analyses also reveal that the effect is stronger for on-field police operations (as opposed to judicial sentences) and in the regions of birth of Italy's four main OCGs.
The experimental component of the study – which will be run at the beginning of 2025 – consists of an original survey experiment, recruiting 6,000 respondents to uncover the causal mechanisms linking State’s and citizens’ actions against organized crime. Namely, the experiment will expose two randomly selected sets of subjects to different pieces of information: the control group will receive information on the efforts of the state to fight the mafia, but no insights as to the results of these efforts. The treatment group will also get two additional sentences, emphasizing how effective such efforts have been through the years. The analyses will then estimate whether this additional information has significant effects on subjects' attitudes and behaviour, with particular regard to their trust in the state and their beliefs about the strength of mafia groups.
The Zoom link will be sent upon registration. If you would like to receive the paper, please contact PoliticalBehaviour.Colloquium@eui.eu.