%0 Journal Article
%T The Long
%A Andrea Ruggeri
%A Stefano Costalli
%J Comparative Political Studies
%@ 1552-3829
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0010414018784057
%X Are there long-term legacies of civil wars on the electoral geography of post-conflict democracies? We argue that parties derived from armed bands enjoy an organizational advantage in areas where they fought and won the war. Former combatants can create a strong local party organization that serves as a crucial mobilization tool for elections. Parties have strong incentives to institutionalize this organizational advantage and retain electoral strongholds over time. We test our theory on the case of Italy (1946-1968). Our findings indicate that, on average, the communist party managed to create a stronger organization in areas where its bands fought the resistance war against Nazi-Fascist forces¡ªand left-wing parties had a better electoral performance in those areas in subsequent elections. A stronger party organization is correlated with a positive electoral performance for many years, while the direct effect of civil war on electoral patterns decays after few years
%K civil war
%K democratization and regime change
%K European politics
%K Italy
%K political legacies
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0010414018784057