This project has received funding via the EUI ESR call 2026, dedicated to Early Stage Researchers.
How do religious institutions shape political competition and electoral outcomes? In many societies, religious organisations have acted as powerful political actors, capable of influencing voter behaviour, shaping policy priorities, and forging alliances with political parties. The channels of influence can be varied: moral persuasion, organisational capacity, or the ability to act as intermediaries between citizens and the state. Understanding how these mechanisms operate in practice is key to explaining both the persistence of dominant political parties and the resilience of religion in politics.
This project studies the role of the Catholic Church in sustaining the dominance of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party (DC) in the decades following the Second World War. Italy offers an especially rich setting for this question: during the Cold War, the DC and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) were locked in intense political competition, particularly at the municipal level, where grassroots party politics thrived. Historical accounts suggest that the Church was a crucial ally of the DC, especially in rural and small-town contexts, both as a moral authority and as an institutional broker.