An Unintended Consequence of Gender Balance Laws: Mafia Fuels Political Violence

Several studies document that women are more honest than men, so an increase in their political representation improves political institutions. However, greater honesty among politicians is an obstacle to mafias’ influence, who may respond by escalating violence. We test this unintended consequence in Italy using Law 215/2012 whereby voters can express two preferences if they are of different genders. A Difference-in- Differences analysis documents an increase in violence probability of 0.6 times its mean (0.031). An alternative Differences-in-Discontinuities design yields similar results. These findings are not driven by the regions most plagued by mafias, and are validated by several robustness checks.