Black Empowerment and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act (with G. Facchini, M. Tabellini, and C. Testa)
How did southern whites respond to the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA)? Leveraging newly digitized data on county-level voter registration by race between 1956 and 1980, and exploiting pre-determined variation in exposure to the federal intervention, we document that the VRA increases both Black and white political participation. Consistent with the VRA triggering white counter-mobilization, the surge in white registrations is concentrated in counties where African Americans represent a political threat. Counter-mobilization leads to a short run increase in support for racially conservative candidates, and to a slow-down in local public spending salient to Black Americans, such as public sector employment and education.
Date: 21 October 2024, 11:30 (Monday, 2nd week, Michaelmas 2024)
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Skills Lab
Speaker: Andrea Bernini (University of Oxford)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Part of: Political Economy Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Edward Clark