Political Capture and Bureaucratic Behavior: Evidence from Mafia-Infiltrated Municipalities

Local governments promise democratic responsiveness but are also vulnerable to political capture by illicit actors. While existing research documents the political and economic consequences of capture, less is known about how bureaucrats respond when political leadership is captured — whether they become instruments of corrupt rule or resist it. We examine these competing expectations in the context of Italian municipalities infiltrated by mafia organizations. Leveraging a law that allows the central government to dissolve captured municipal councils, we study how bureaucratic performance responds when political capture is abruptly removed. Using a difference-in-differences design with matched controls based on a machine-learning index of mafia-infiltration risk, we show that dissolutions substantially improve bureaucratic performance. Evidence from administrative data and investigative reports supports the interpretation that the lower performance during mafia rule was driven by bureaucrats resisting political capture. Our findings show that bureaucracies mitigate, rather than amplify, the downstream consequences of political capture.