Andrea Tizzani

Can the promises of charismatic leaders unify a nation — and what happens when those promises are not kept? I study Giuseppe Garibaldi's 1860 expedition through Southern Italy, exploiting the unexpected halt of his march at Teano as a quasi-random break in exposure to his charismatic appeal. Municipalities Garibaldi visited initially rallied behind Italian unification, but withdrew their support as his promises went unmet: they showed weaker opposition to brigandage, lower turnout in the 1913 suffrage expansion, fewer army volunteers in 1866, and desertion of the governing coalition in 1948. Charisma raises the expectations against which politics is later judged.

How does mass media shape gender norms? We study the expansion of newspapers across 620 districts of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. On average, newspaper access reinforced traditional gender roles: female labor force participation declined, marriage accelerated, and fertility rose. Yet these effects reversed in districts exposed to feminist messaging — most notably the 1866 suffrage petition. Newspapers acted not just as information sources, but as coordination technologies, amplifying or stalling change depending on timing, content, and narrative salience.

Does gender equality make societies more peaceful? Across 29 African countries, I examine whether intra-regional gender equality affects the incidence and brutality of internal conflict, using distance to the closest water spring as an instrument for gender roles, in the spirit of Boserup. Higher gender equality leads to less brutal — but not fewer — conflicts: a one standard deviation increase in gender equality reduces conflict fatalities by 0.21 standard deviations.