Berlinguer, I Love You (Still): The Downstream Effects of Expressive Voting

Abstract For nearly as long as the rational voting paradox has puzzled scholars, it has been recognized that voters’ decisions are influenced by expressive motivations. Yet, since disentangling emotional from instrumental drivers remains an inherently difficult task, little is known about how voting on the former grounds can shape future political preferences. We fill this gap by focusing on a rare instance of expressive voting: support for the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in the 1984 European election, preceded by the sudden death of PCI’s leader, Enrico Berlinguer. Via a Regression Discontinuity approach, exploiting differential expressive motives along the border(s) of Berlinguer’s electoral district, we show that municipal-level support for PCI increased more sharply in 1984 in areas where voters could express their preference for the just-deceased leader. Combining voting records and individual survey data, we further show how votes cast on expressive grounds in 1984 returned to PCI for about five years after Berlinguer’s death.