Abstract
In a unprecedented and still unique instance of self-determination in nation building, the institutional form of the state at the moment of democratization in 1946 Italy has been chosen with a referendum held in universal franchise. The vote, involving around 25 million people including women and a large majority of men voting for the very first time, offers a unique opportunity to study individual preferences over democratic institutions in the population at large. We study how the exposure to republican and monarchic rule in historical times shaped individual preferences for free institutions during democratization. We provide a measurement of political history over the 1000–1861 time period for around 8,000 municipalities. Evidence shows that higher intensity of exposure to republican, respectively monarchic, rule in the past is a main determinant of the vote. Alternative identification strategies and checks, including the use of local variation, IV and spatial RDD strategies, bolster a causal interpretation of the findings. Large effort is devoted to validation and mechanisms. Accounting for conditions in 1946 confirms the role of political history and documents that socio-economic conditions at the moment of the vote (inequality, education and sectoral employment), experience of nazi-fascist massacres, war violence, and exposure to radio propaganda also matter. For both validation and mechanism, we assemble a database on historical local statutes in preindustrial times. Within municipality panel variation show that political history in quarter-centuries leads to the emergence of charters granting freedom and self-governance. Finally, we look at large scale surveys, to study the impact on the support for democracy and trust in political institutions half a century after democratization.