Charismatic leaders inspire hope and unity during upheavals, offering visions that resonate across generations. Yet when their promises remain unmet, their legacies undergo critical reevaluation, reshaping national identity and trust in institutions. The recent loss of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress’s parliamentary majority in 2024, driven by frustration with inequality and institutional failures, underscores the enduring impact of unmet promises. This prompts a crucial question: How do charismatic leaders' unfulfilled commitments shape political engagement and national cohesion? This paper studies Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose 1860 Expedition of the Thousand mobilized widespread support for Italian unification through bold reform promises. However, the resulting monarchy under King Vittorio Emanuele II starkly contrasted Garibaldi’s republican and social ideals. Exploiting a historical event—Garibaldi's unexpected halt at Vairano—I compare municipalities Garibaldi visited with those he intended but failed to reach, isolating the causal effect of his presence. Using new historical data, I show Garibaldi’s visits initially boosted enthusiasm for unification but ultimately led to substantial long-term disillusionment, evidenced by lower political participation. This effect is particularly strong in municipalities closest to major wheat-producing regions, where expectations were heightened by Garibaldi’s promise to abolish the tax on milled goods. Further, Garibaldi himself became a scapegoat for broader institutional failures: municipalities he visited volunteered less for his army in the 1866 Third War of Independence and showed weaker support for the Fronte Democratico Popolare (FDP) in 1948, despite the FDP explicitly invoking his legacy. These findings highlight how charismatic leaders’ unmet promises can fundamentally reshape political trajectories, societal trust, and national identity.

Draft available upon request

How do mass media shape gender norms? This paper studies the expansion of local newspapers in Victorian and Edwardian Britain and their impact on women’s labor supply, marriage, fertility, and political mobilization. We link data on the staggered arrival of newspapers across 620 districts to census microdata, petition records, and newspaper text. Using a dynamic difference-in-differences design, we find that, on average, newspaper access reinforced traditional gender roles: female labor force participation declined, marriage accelerated, and fertility rose. Yet these patterns reversed in districts exposed to a major feminist shock—the 1866 suffrage petition for women's suffrage. In these areas, newspapers increased women’s labor market participation, delayed marriage, and reduced fertility. Effects were strongest in places with lower baseline female empowerment. Text analysis reveals that positive framing of the petition independently boosted female labor supply. Moreover, exposure to favorable coverage of the 1866 petition increased local petitioning rates for female political emancipation, suggesting media shaped not only beliefs but collective action. These results show that newspapers acted not just as information sources, but as coordination technologies—amplifying or stalling change depending on timing, content, and narrative salience. Symbolic inclusion can shift social equilibria—but the emancipatory power of media depends on who is visible, when, and how.

Can gender roles and gender equality explain the incidence and brutality of armed conflicts? While qualitative studies have long recognized the impact of unequal gender roles on violence, no empirical study has already explored this relationship. Feminist scholars in international relations have recently made a stand to affirm how the juxtaposition of privileged masculinity and “devalorized” femininity can contribute to explaining the patterns of violence. Indeed, as the sociologist Johan Galtung explains, the mutual relationship between structural and cultural violence helps in understanding how gender-related inequalities can become inescapable rationalizations of war-initiation. This essay aims at quantitatively investigating whether the intra-regional level of gender equality has an impact on the occurrence of internal conflicts and the number of battle-related deaths. I collect fine-grained geographical data on conflict and gender norms from 29 countries of continental Africa. Results indicate that higher gender equality leads to less brutal (but not fewer) conflicts. To establish causality, I exploit the distance to the closest water spring as an instrument for gender roles, by relying on Ester Boserup’s theory of the role of women in human development. Indeed, collecting water is a traditionally female occupation and women have been used to carry heavy loads over long and winding routes, taking away valuable time from income-generating jobs and education. IV estimates confirm that improvements in gender equality reduce the brutality but not the incidence of conflicts: a 1 standard deviation increase in gender equality results in 0.21 s.d. less fatalities in conflicts.