Reservoir-induced displacement and social participation: Evidence from the Spanish dictatorship

What are the long-term impacts of large inflows of forcibly displaced persons on displaced-hosting social participation outcomes? This paper addresses this question by exploring the construction of reservoirs during the Spanish dictatorship (1936–1975), which forced thousands of people into displacement. I implement an instrumental variable approach using the margin of whether the reservoir closest to a municipality was planned before the dictatorship, as well as its size and distance. To this end, I rely on a newly assembled historical panel dataset on forced displacement and social participation. I show that host municipalities experience a long-term and sizable decrease in voter turnout and new associations between 1977 and 2019. In turn, a higher share of the internally displaced population relative to natives mitigate these effects. I propose two mechanisms associated with the drop in institutional and general trust in host municipalities. The findings highlight the need to strengthen social cohesion between natives and forcibly displaced groups.