How does Wartime Violence Affect Political Polarization? Tracing Short-term Legacy in the Italian Case (1946-1954)

How does wartime violence affect social polarization? The literature on legacies of political violence has extensively investigated whether experiences of violence can affect political behavior in post-war democracies. With few exceptions, most of these studies have usually estimated wartime effects on electoral politics by adopting a micro-level analysis of electoral behavior, thereby measuring political preferences’ change as variation in the vote share for left/right parties in post-war elections. While civil war literature has shown that violence can contribute to social polarization, little attention has been given to political polarization as an outcome of wartime legacies. Therefore, this study assesses whether wartime violence can polarize by evaluating political polarization measured before and after civil wars. Going beyond estimating legacy effects on polarization outcome, this study delves into the explicit mechanisms explaining wartime legacies. While the literature has decisively contributed to identifying channels by which historical persistence may unfold, the explicit mechanisms underlying violent legacies are often undertheorized. This research aims to fill this gap by analyzing how wartime violence during the Italian Civil War (1943 – 1945) affected local political polarization in peacetime politics. It details a concatenation of legacy persistence mechanisms, namely, framing, anchoring, brokering and mobilization. This research contends that local political entrepreneurs serve as key agencies facilitating legacy persistence while helping explain time and spatial variations. This study adopts a multi-level research design that combines the statistical analysis of cross-province data for case study identification with within-case analysis based on qualitative data collected via local archival research. This research contributes to the literature on violent legacies by heeding recent calls to delve more explicitly into the legacy mechanisms. While little research on violent legacies has moved beyond quantitative analysis, this research can foster scholarship using the process-tracing method to trace legacy persistence mechanisms.