Criticism of economic globalization and technological progress has gained support in Italy in the last two decades but, due to the di↵erentiated exposure of local communities to this process, political outcomes have varied considerably across the country. By observing the local impact of three global economic phenomena (flows of migrants, foreign competition in international trade, and di↵usion of robots) alongside with the patterns of local electoral outcomes potentially associated with discontent, this work analyses from a spatial perspective the economic forces driving the evolution of general elections in 2001, 2008 and 2013 in Italy. The analysis reveals that all these global factors had an impact on political outcomes associated with discontent, albeit in di↵erent ways and changing over time. These novel empirical results indicate that these global drivers interacted with elements pertaining to the political supply, such as party federation and scandals. By combining various methodological advances coming from the political geography and the political economy literature, this work attempts to bridge disciplines sharing similar interests but adopting di↵erent tools of analysis.

Keywords: local electoral outcomes, local labor markets, immigration, import competition, robotization.

JEL Classification Codes: D72, F14, F60, O33.

(published on Journal of Regional Science, 61(1), 86-111: https://doi.org/10.1111/jors.12503)