Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/161173 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 10550
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Many people are concerned about societal cohesion in the face of higher numbers of foreigners migrating to Western democracies. The challenge for the future is to find and adopt institutions that foster integration. We investigate how the right to vote in local elections affects immigrants' compliance with the law. In our study for Denmark, we exploit an institutional regulation that grants foreigners local voting rights after three years of stay. Relying on register data, we find causal evidence that the first possibility to vote considerably reduces the number of legal offenses of non-Western male immigrants in the time after elections.
Subjects: 
migration
voting rights
immigrant integration
crime
RDD
JEL: 
D02
K42
J15
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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