Shadowless Theocracies

Abstract

I investigate the long-term effects of theocracy on political preferences and religiosity, exploiting a river that separated the theocratic Papal States from secular states for three centuries. To disentangle the effect of theocracy from other confounders, I propose a novel extension to geographic regression discontinuity designs, the Difference-in-Geographic Discontinuities (DIG). While religiosity and political preferences descriptively differ discontinuously at the river, the causal effect of theocracy is null. Using existing and novel datasets spanning eight centuries, I suggest that pre-existing inheritance norms possibly affected religiosity and political preferences by increasing collectivism and social capital, thereby neutralizing the impact of theocratic institutions.

Keywords: Theocracy, political preferences, religion, persistence

JEL Classification: D72, N14, C21, Z12