publications

peer reviewed articles

1. Without Roots: The Political Consequences of Collective Economic Shocks

   Simone Cremaschi, Nicola Bariletto, and Catherine E. De Vries

   American Political Science Review, Conditionally Accepted , 2024

   Abstract Preprint

   While an abundance of scholarly work investigates how economic shocks influence the political behavior of affected individuals, we know much less about their collective effects. Exploiting the sudden onset of a plant disease epidemic in Puglia, Italy—where the plant pathogen Xylella fastidiosa devastated centuries-old olive groves—we explore the collective effects of economic shocks. By combining quantitative difference-in-differences analysis of municipal data with a novel case selection strategy for qualitative fieldwork, we document the hardship caused by the outbreak, and estimate a 2.2-percentage-point increase in far-right vote share. We show that pre-existing public service deprivation moderates the shock’s political consequences through a community narrative of state neglect. These findings highlight that pre-existing community conditions shape the political consequences of economic shocks, and that plant disease epidemics—which are becoming more prevalent due to climate change—have important political effects.

2. Geographies of Discontent: Public Service Deprivation and the Rise of the Far Right in Italy

   Simone Cremaschi, Paula Rettl, Marco Cappelluti, and Catherine E. De Vries

   American Journal of Political Science, Forthcoming , 2024

   Abstract Preprint

   Electoral support for far-right parties is often linked to geographies of discontent. We argue that public service deprivation, defined as reduced access to public services, plays an important role in explaining these patterns. By exploiting an Italian reform that reduced access to public services in municipalities with fewer than 5,000 residents, we show that far-right support in national elections increased in municipalities affected by the reform compared to unaffected ones. We use geo-coded individual-level survey data and party rhetoric data to explore the mechanisms underlying this result. Our findings suggest that concerns about immigration are exacerbated by the reform, and that far-right parties increasingly linked public services to immigration in their rhetoric after the reform. These demand and supply dynamics help us understand how public service deprivation shapes geographic patterns in far-right support.

3. Voting and Climate Change: How an Extreme Weather Event Increased Support for a Radical-Right Incumbent in Italy

   Simone Cremaschi, and Piero Stanig

   Journal of Politics, Conditionally Accepted , 2024

   Abstract Preprint

   We empirically assess two contrasting predictions that disasters related to climate change raise support for (1) environmentalist parties and (2) incumbents that successfully provide disaster relief. We study the electoral effects of Vaia, a devastating storm that hit the mountainous area of northeast Italy in 2018. We measure the storm’s material consequences combining satellite and georeferenced data on forest disruption, blackout-related changes in nightlights intensity, and damage relief, and exploit the stark variation in damage intensity between adjacent and closely similar municipalities in a stringent difference-in-differences design. The storm significantly increased support for the regional incumbent – the radical-right Lega in most affected provinces – and did not generate positive electoral returns for parties with environmentalist platforms. More research is needed to understand under which conditions exposure to extreme weather events activates support for environmentalist policy.

4. The Political Legacies of Wartime Resistance: How Local Communities in Italy Keep Anti-fascist Sentiments Alive

   Simone Cremaschi, and Juan Masullo

   Comparative Political Studies, 2024

   Abstract Publisher Replication

   Can past wartime experiences affect political behavior beyond those who lived through them? We argue that local experiences of armed resistance leave political legacies that “memory entrepreneurs” can translate into contemporary political action via a community-based process of intergenerational transmission consisting of three core activities – memorialization, localization, and mobilization. We empirically substantiate this argument in Italy, where an intense armed resistance movement against Nazi-Fascist forces took place in the 1940s. We combine statistical analysis of original data across Italian municipalities and within-case analysis of a purposively selected locality to show how the past impacts the present via the preservation and activation of collective memories. This study improves our understanding of the processes of long-term transmission, emphasizes armed resistance as a critical source of the long-term political legacies of war, and explores its political effects beyond electoral and party politics.

5. Immigrants and Legal Status: Do Personal Contacts Matter?

   Simone Cremaschi, and Carlo Devillanova

   Population, Space and Place, 2020

   Abstract Preprint Publisher

   Using unique Italian survey data on both documented and undocumented immigrants, we empirically quantify the correlation between different types of personal contacts and immigrants’ documentation probability, while also uncovering the contacts’ indirect associations via immigrant labour market outcomes (employment status and job characteristics). Our results indicate that contacts with both natives and family members have a positive and quantitatively large effect on immigrant documentation probability, conditional on a large set of covariates. Contacts with members of the same ethnic group, by contrast, increase documentation probability only moderately, an effect explainable by these co-ethnics’ association with employment probability. Moreover, our findings support the hypothesis that native contacts can connect immigrants with jobs that favour documentation.

6. Undocumented Immigration in Times of Recession [in Italian]

   Simone Cremaschi, Carlo Devillanova, Francesco Fasani, and Tommaso Frattini

   Economia & Lavoro, 2016

   Abstract Preprint Publisher

   This paper analyses microdata from three different sources in order to quantify the impact of the economic recession on undocumented immigrants in Italy and to compare their labour market outcomes in recent years with the performance of native workers and documented immigrants. This study documents for the first time a dramatic deterioration of employment outcomes and housing conditions of undocumented immigrants during the economic crisis started in 2008. In particular, the reduction in the share of employed workers is about three times larger among immigrants lacking legal status than among legally resident immigrants. Differently from what observed for this latter group, among undocumented immigrants the fall in employment affects both genders in a similar way. If immigrant workers are generally more vulnerable in the labour market than natives, the lack of legal status is associated with even higher exposure to the detrimental effects of economic downturns. [In Italian]

selected work in progress

1. Public Service Delivery and Support for the Populist Right: Evidence from the British National Health Service

   Zachary P. Dickson, Sara B. Hobolt, Catherine E. De Vries, and Simone Cremaschi

   2024

   Abstract Preprint

   What happens when a state fails to deliver adequate public services to its citizens? Building on the notion of a social contract, we argue that exposure to deteriorating public service performance creates grievances among affected citizens who as a result withdraw their support from established political parties and move towards anti-establishment populist parties. We examine this intuition in the British context, focusing on one the core aspects of public service provision in the UK – the publicly-funded National Health Service (NHS). By combining government administrative panel data on local health care facilities closures with fine-grained geo-spatial panel data on public preferences and voting intention and using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that closures reduce reported patient satisfaction and increase support for populist right parties. Treatment effect heterogeneity further suggests that increased immigration and registrations of migrants at local practices exacerbate the link between declining public service delivery and populist right support. Our findings contribute to our understanding of the political consequences of public service provision and the rise of the populist right, demonstrating the role of deteriorating public service delivery in driving support for populist parties, especially in local areas undergoing rapid demographic change.

2. A Gender Backlash: Does Exposure to Female Labor Market Participation Fuel Gender Conservatism?

   Paula Rettl, Diane Bolet, Catherine E. De Vries, Simone Cremaschi, Tarik Abou-Chadi, and Sergi Pardos-Prado

   2024

   Abstract Preprint

   The growing participation of women in the labor market has marked a significant societal transformation, coinciding with the rise of gender conservatism and far-right support. We study whether the economic consequences of labor market feminization and gender backlash are causally connected beyond other well-known factors, such as cultural change. Using Swiss panel data and a novel shift-share instrument measuring men’s exposure to changes in the gender composition of the labor force across industries (labor market feminization), we make two contributions. First, labor market feminization negatively affects men’s income and employment prospects, making men more conservative in their gender attitudes. Second, while labor market feminization affects gender attitudes within the private sphere, in a context of low politicization of gender by political elites, it does not influence broader political outcomes like policy preferences or far-right voting. These findings reveal the sequence and mechanisms behind the distributional consequences of labor market feminization.

3. Underground Immigrant Organization: Why West African Men in Italy Withdraw into Exploited Labor Camps

   Simone Cremaschi

   2024

   Abstract

   I investigate how access to an organized ethnic community shapes immigrant responses to exclusion. I draw on extensive ethnographic, interview, and survey data gathered among male West African farm workers living in large self-organized labor camps in Italy between 2015 and 2017. My fieldwork shows that when an underground community infrastructure is available, some immigrants use it as support while attempting to integrate into mainstream society. Others utilize it as a long-term shelter for withdrawal. I theorize a decision-making model and provide evidence that withdrawal (1) is driven by barriers to mainstream society rather than returns in the underground economy or coercion by exploitative agents, and (2) allows immigrants to compensate for unmet economic expectations with positive identification in the camp community. My study contributes to enhancing scholarly understandings of ethnic boundary-making, location choices, and labor exploitation among severely marginalized immigrants.

book chapters and reviews

1. Among Italy’s Outcasts. Review of Ciao Ousmane. The Hidden Exploitation of Italy’s Migrant Workers, by Hsiao-Hung Pai

   Simone Cremaschi

   The Political Quarterly, 2021

   Publisher
2. Do Non-State Armed Groups Influence Each Other in Attack Timing and Frequency? Generating, Analyzing, and Comparing Empirical Data and Simulation

   Simone Cremaschi, Baris Kirdemir, Juan Masullo, Adam R. Pah, Nicolas Payette, and Rithvik Yarlagadda

   In Computational Conflict Research, ed. Deutschmann, Emanuel, Lorenz, Jan, Nardin, Luis G., Natalini, Davide, Wilhelm, Adalbert F. X., Springer , 2020

   Abstract Publisher

   Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) operate in complex environments, commonly existing as one of the many organizations engaged in one-sided violent attacks against the state and/or the civilian population. When trying to explain the execution and timing of these attacks, most theories look at NSAGs’ internal organizational features or how these groups interact with the state or civilian population. In this study, we take a different approach: we use a self-exciting temporal model to ask if the behavior of one NSAG affects the behavior of other groups operating in the same country and if the actions of groups with actual ties (i.e., groups with some recognized relationship) have a larger effect than those with environmental ties (i.e., groups simply operating in the same country). We focus on three cases where multiple NSAGs operated at the same time: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Colombia, from 2001 to 2005. We find mixed results for the notion that the actions of one NSAG influence the actions of others operating in the same conflict. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we find evidence that NSAG actions do influence the timing of attacks by other NSAGs; however, there is no discernible link between NSAG actions and the timing of attacks in Colombia. Nevertheless, we do consistently find that there is no significant difference between the effect that actual or environmental ties could have in these three cases.

3. Review of Karen Schönwälder, Söner Petermann, Jörg Hüttermann, Steven Vertovec, Miles Hewstone, Dietlind Stolle, Katharina Schmid, and Thomas Schmitt, “Diversity and Contact. Immigration and Social Integration in German Cities”

   Simone Cremaschi

   Sociologica, 2017

   Publisher