Do Enfranchised Immigrants Affect Politicians’ Behavior? Authors: - March 2024 Working Paper

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University or the views of Utah State University. [...] The expansion of voting rights in the 19th and early 20th centuries evolved from a limited group of property-owning men to all British Empire residents in Britain, culminating in the Representation of the People Act of 1928. [...] I regress the change in the outcome in constituency c between years t and t − 10 (Ycrt − Ycrt−10), on the change in the share of the foreign-born enfranchised population (ImmEn fcrt ) and the foreign-born disenfranchised population (ImmDisEn fcrt ) between the census years. [...] Figure 2 shows the spatial variation (across- and within-constituency) in the share of the foreign-born population and the share of the enfranchised foreign-born population across the 192 constituencies using the 1981 Census. [...] Appendix Table C5 presents the robustness of the IV strategy by constructing an alternative version of the instruments, such as a traditional Bartik instrument without the leave-out strategy and a leave-out version of the instrument at the county level to alleviate any concerns that pull factors are correlated across the constituency units.