2 November 2026
When Politics Enters the Waiting Room: Far-Right Electoral Victories Exacerbate Discrimination in Access to Healthcare
This study investigates whether far-right electoral victories encourage discrimination by street-level bureaucrats in municipal healthcare offices.
Combining a field-experimental audit with a regression discontinuity design in Italy, the research assesses how individuals with native-Italian versus West-African accents are treated when requesting registration with a general medical practitioner.
The results demonstrate that callers with West-African accents faced significantly higher rates of scrutiny and dismissive responses, a disparity that was exacerbated in municipalities where far-right candidates narrowly won. These findings suggest that far-right electoral success can undermine impartiality and equal access to essential services.