To what extent does the degree of authoritarian political support depend on collective memories of a past experience with democracy? And how costly is it for a dictator to manipulate such memories with the help of propaganda? In this paper, we develop a political economy model with endogenous...

We study the institutional determinants of ethnic conflict by exploiting a unique historical setting originated from a failed forced assimilation program, the Italianization of South Tyrol. The program imposed entry barriers, for non-Italian speakers, in the labor market for public servants. The...