Toxic Winds: Mainstream Inertia, Voters' Discontent, and Challenger Success

This paper investigates how voters react to persistent inaction of mainstream parties in government. We study  the illegal burial, dumping, and burning of toxic industrial waste perpetrated by criminal organizations in Southern Italy since the late 1980s. We combine plausibly exogenous geographical variation in exposure to pollutants stemming from historical wind trajectories with the sudden release of information about the exact geo-location of contaminated sites. Difference-in-differences estimates show that, after the information shock, municipalities exposed to toxic winds experienced a persistent decline in turnout of 5.8 percentage points relative to non-exposed municipalities. Using individual-level survey data, we also find that exposure to pollutants reduces trust in politics, parties and the national parliament. Finally, we show that exposure to toxic winds increases the vote share of the challenger Five Star Movement (FSM) in national elections, who actively contrasted mainstream parties’ inaction on the issue.

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