On the Cultural Legacy of Political Institutions: Evidence from the Spanish Regions

In the last decades, numerous studies have argued that political institutions are able to leave a persistent cultural legacy. Spain today presents a geographically concentrated distribution of societal traits that are related to social and political participation. This paper examines the possible historical origin of these regional patterns and concludes a) that those regions that historically experienced more inclusive political systems exhibit currently higher levels of this culture of participation and b) that inclusive institutions are able to leave a more intense cultural legacy when they are more proximate to the bulk of the population. This thesis is robust to controlling for other possible determinants