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I am a doctoral researcher in political economy at the Government Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. My lead supervisor is Stephane Wolton. My co-supervisors are Rafael Hortala-Vallve, Valentino Larcinese, and Nelson A. Ruiz.
During the autumn term, I was Associate Lecturer in political economy at UCL's Department of Political Science. In spring, I visited NYU's Department of Politics, sponsored by Arturas Rozenas.
I research public policy under autocracy through a quantitative, historical lens. My thesis focuses on the determinants and legacies of repression, propaganda, and infrastructural development in fascist Italy.
I am also interested in formal theory and have developed a model of access journalism, highlighting its connection to media "crookedness" claims.
During my PhD, I have been a Graduate Teaching Assistant for three courses in political economy, helped organise the last two editions of the Behavioural Political Economy Workshop, co-founded the London Seminar for Graduate Political Science, and organised LSE's weekly PSPE Work in Progress Seminar for two years.
I hold a BSc in Economics from the University of Bologna and an MSc from Bocconi University, where I was a Pre-doc for a year. More details on all of the above can be found in my CV.
Lorenzo Vicari
Lorenzo Vicari
PhD Researcher
Department of Government
London School of Economics
Research
Research
Work in progress
Work in progress
Seeds: Economic Development and the Persistence of Authoritarianism
[Naples School of Economics workshop 2024 slides]
This study investigates whether citizens of autocratic governments become more or less authoritarian when benefiting from successful development policies. Divergent theories provide divergent predictions: modernization theory suggests that economic well-being fosters demands for democratization, while retrospective gratitude may bolster autocratic legitimacy. Additionally, autocrats often can facilitate positive responsibility attribution by relying on propaganda. To explore the question, this study leverages the Battle for Wheat, fascist Italy’s cornerstone agricultural policy, which rapidly and substantially increased wheat yields throughout the country in the late 1920s. Employing an instrumental variable approach based on soil productivity changes from low to intermediate inputs, findings reveal that higher wheat yields led to increased support for the neo-fascist party MSI post-WWII, persisting for three to five decades despite democratization efforts. Heterogeneity based on radio signal strength, interpreted as a quasi-exogenous proxy for propaganda intensity, shows that the lingering support is concentrated in areas most heavily exposed to fascist media. In these same areas, more evidence of collective memory is indicated by street names and monuments glorifying the regime. However, an analysis of public opinion polling suggests that development outcomes are positively correlated with long-term democratic preferences and that, while neo-fascist voters generally display more authoritarian preferences, they do to a lesser extent in the locations most benefited by the policy. Overall, voters who likely associated themselves with neo-fascist parties due to lived or inherited policy benefits seem to harbour less anti-democratic tendencies. Operating distinctions based on the narratives that lead voters to autocratic parties is crucial to understanding their success and long-term persistence.
Scoops: A Theory of Access Journalism and Media Crookedness
[EPSA 2024 slides]
This study proposes a supply-side explanation of media bias based on incumbents' strategic provision of news to politically neutral media outlets. In the model, the politician holds newsworthy information by having direct access to government activities. Media outlets are interested in publishing news to increase their readership and reputation. The incumbent strategically provides it asking for lenient coverage of bad news such as scandals or policy blunders in exchange. As a result, forgoing some of its reputation, the media withholds bad news. Thus, even a perfectly Bayesian representative voter - who receives the news report anticipating this cooperation - is still more likely to re-elect the incumbent relative to a case without symbiosis. Moreover, the model highlights how concerns around reputation lead the media to be more lenient towards high-prior incumbents. This dynamic inflates the difference in the likelihood of observing scandals by bad incumbents relative to good incumbents beyond their difference in expected congruence.
Other projects
Other projects
Cuffs: Targeted Repression and Compliance under Autocracy (with Pau Grau-Vilalta and Andrea Xamo)
In this two-fold project, we leverage granular archival sources on fascist Italy to inquire how incoming autocrats take hold of the administrative state. Then, we investigate the impact of state repression on electoral compliance and military mobilisation.
Climate Migration and Political Tensions (with Mathilde Emeriau and Stephane Wolton)
Early-stage empirical exploration of the effects of Italian migration to France in the late XIX Century.
Bricks: The Long-term Political Impact of Public Housing
I am currently digitising fine-grained archival data on INA-Casa, a major public housing project implemented in Italy in the 1950s, to illuminate long-term "constituency building" by the Italian Christian Democratic party through post-war reconstruction.
Teaching
Teaching
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