This book, by contrast, tries to make sense of the mafia in simple, rational terms. … The hypothesis developed here is that the mafia is a specific economic enterprise, an industry which produces, promotes, and sells private protection.

XREF: This rational-economic framing mirrors how economists like Gary Becker analyze crime, and contrasts with cultural or moral explanations of organized crime.

Violence is a means, not an end; a resource, not the final product. The commodity that is really at stake is protection. It may be argued that ultimately protection rests on the ability to use force, but it does not follow that it coincides with it. Protection is an ambiguous commodity. As Charles Tilly writes: "The word protection sounds two contrasting tones. One is comforting, the other ominous. With one tone 'protection' calls up images of the shelter against danger provided by a powerful friend, a large insurance policy, or a sturdy roof. With the other, it evokes the racket in which a local strong man forces merchants to pay tribute in order to avoid damage—damage the strong man himself threatens to deliver" (1985: 170).

XREF: Connects to Tilly's classic work on state formation and protection rackets, likening state coercion to organized crime. Builds on: "The mafia operates as a business selling private protection."

In every transaction in which at least one party does not trust the other to comply with the rules, protection becomes desirable, even if it is a poor and costly substitute for trust. This book shows that mafia protection fulfills this role, albeit in an erratic and limited fashion. The market is therefore rational in the sense that there are people who find it in their individual interest to buy mafia protection. While some may be victims of extortion, many others are willing customers. … There is a propensity to reduce cognitive dissonance by reverting to the view of mafiosi as mere extortionists.

The mafia's "consumers" are quite cynical about it and know that mafia protection is often not a good but a lesser evil. Some are even aware that the mafia has done much to destroy whatever trust might have developed independently. Yet, although the use of private protection may appear objectionable in principle, in practice it is often a sensible option for certain individuals.

From the point of view of the state they wish to overthrow, a revolutionary society or an association for criminal purposes [associazione a delinquere] will not be lawful [giuridici] ... but this does not rule out the possibility that such associations can comprise institutions, organizations, and codes which, intrinsically and in isolation, are lawful.... We know that, under the threat of state law, there are often shadow associations whose organization could be deemed analogous, on a small scale, to that of the state. They have legislative and executive authorities, courts which settle disputes and mete out punishments, agents who carry them out inexorably, and complex and precise statutes similar to those of the state. These associations therefore create their own order, like the state and its legal institutions.

DEFINE: Explains how criminal associations internally create their own lawful order and institutions akin to state governance.

These statements are the corollary of a relativist approach in the relationship between the state and the law. Romano argues that since the former is not a necessary condition of the latter (p. 111), the state cannot justifiably claim a monopoly over the law. The state is only one institution among many, and there is no reason why its legal order should be regarded as superior.

DEFINE: Introduces Romano's institutionalist/relativist view that the state is one legal order among many, not supreme.

Although not exclusively Italian (it is linked with a European school of legal thinking and is part of the jurisprudential debate opposing the role of the state as understood by the classical liberal tradition; see Gozzi 1988), Romano's position has been very influential in Italy, not so much on mainstream legal thinking, which is firmly statist, as on politics. It has enjoyed popularity with all kinds of antiliberal circles right, left, and center.

This book aims to make a contribution by showing that the parallel between the mafia and the state has clear limits, and, consequently, that the view of the mafia as a legal system in its own right does not actually stand up. First, as Chapters 5 and 6 make clear, the mafia is not a centralized industry but is constituted by many individual "firms" united by a brand name and, intermittently, a cartel. The norms adopted by the cartel are often breached and manipulated, and in no way are they part of a fixed and universally agreed-on code; nor is there any moral justification for them. Next, criteria of universality and equality (let alone transparency) are irrelevant: protection is sold on a private basis to individual customers; its price varies according to the customers' wealth and position, the types of services required, and last but not least the whims of the seller. The mafia is not even a "minimal state" as defined by Nozick (1974)—one which enjoys an undisputed control over the use of force in a certain territory and protects everyone, whether they like it or not. Finally, the parallel with a democratic state is even more tenuous: mafiosi are not accountable to their subjects, and the mafia has not citizens but at best clients. The more accurate counterpart to the mafia is a business.

XREF: Connects to economic and political theory frameworks like Nozick's minimal state and legal pluralism debates. Builds on: "Shadow organizations mirror state structure with courts and statutes."

If social life is to be acceptably harmonious and commodities efficiently produced and exchanged, the administration of justice, the protection of individual rights, the assignment of public offices, and the running of elections cannot be privatized, and the trade in them must be banned. Rights must apply universally, their enforcement unrelated to personal wealth. If these commodities are subject to commerce, the consequences are nefarious.

XREF: Connects to debates about privatization of courts, policing, and voting systems in contemporary governance literature. DEFINE: Clarifies the boundary between commodities and institutions that must remain public goods.

Even though it ultimately prevents economic development, the mafia market has its own intrinsic tenacity. It is an equilibrium: no one has an immediate interest to behave differently and fight it even if one sees its drawbacks. Miserable and unreliable it may be, but the mafia's protection succeeds in making a profit from distrust, thus satisfying the interests of many.

Paradoxically, had there been a consistently acquiescent attitude on the part of the state, had the state invariably chosen to bargain with the mafia, de facto acknowledging its semilegal status—enjoyed, for instance, by the yakuza in Japan—the mafia would not have been so violent.

QUESTION: Why would Japanese yakuza remain less violent under state acquiescence, and does that hold across contexts?

Mafiosi as such deal with no good other than protection. Joining the mafia amounts to receiving a license to supply protection rather than simply consume it. Before undertaking this work I thought that the distinction was analytically useful but blurred in reality; in fact it turns out to be clear-cut in the evidence (see Chapters 7 and 9).

DEFINE: Defines the mafia's core function as protection-supplying rather than producing conventional goods, a conceptual framework the author uses throughout.

This does not imply that becoming a mafioso is a particularly rational thing to do; it means only that once in the trade, agents must run it efficiently or someone else will take their place.

A vaccaro (cattle breeder) I interviewed in Palermo succinctly expressed the core elements of the hypothesis I wish to present: "When the butcher comes to me to buy an animal, he knows that I want to cheat him. But I know that he wants to cheat me. Thus we need, say, Peppe [that is, a third party] to make us agree. And we both pay Peppe a percentage of the deal." This statement has far-reaching theoretical consequences. There are mutual low-trust expectations generating a demand for guarantees on both sides, and there is "Peppe," a man capable of meeting this demand and trusted by both butcher and vaccaro to be capable of doing so.

Builds on: "Mafia protection substitutes poorly for trust in transactions."

The furniture dealer maintained that "Peppe" was mainly selling information, thereby making the transactions possible, and that it was for this service that he received a 2 percent commission. When in addition he acted as a guarantor of quality and payment, the percentage increased. He himself had in his youth thought of becoming a "Peppe" on the livestock market but was discouraged by the theatrical requirements of the job, which entails a perpetual exchange of insults, simulated outrage, ritual claims of friendship, handshaking, and robust shoulder patting. Both agreed, however, that at least some of the time "Peppe" acted as a guarantor, and that over a given territory he operated as a monopolise. All the transactions in question were illegal. They were part of the so-called clandestine slaughtering marker, a market which has long been said—in one of chose wholistic and sinister formulas common in this field—to be "under the control of the mafia." According to law, no transaction involving meat may take place outside the public slaughterhouse, the only permissible meeting point for butchers and catcle breeders. There the problem of trust, as the vaccaro himself pointed out, is less acute, for the weight, health, and quality of the animal are formally controlled and easily verified. Nonetheless, there is an incentive to bypass the legal procedure: the opportunity to avoid tax. At a cost which must be lower than the tax, the presence of "Peppe" as informer and guarantor makes this attractive but illegal transaction feasible.

XREF: Connects to the author's broader exploration of how economic systems need trust mechanisms, parallel to mafia-mediated exchange discussed elsewhere. QUESTION: Worth asking how formal legal channels fail to solve the trust problem, leaving space for intermediaries like 'Peppe'. Builds on: "Low-trust parties demand paid third-party guarantors to mediate deals."

My claim is that the main market for mafia services is to be found in unstable transactions in which crust is scarce and fragile. Such is the case, for instance, with illegal transactions in which no legitimate enforcement agency—in other words, the state—is available. There are many variants on the model. "Peppe" may be a single person or a network of more or less organized agents. He may supervise every transaction in a given marker, or he may be asked ex post facto to resolve a transaction in which cooperation and agreement have failed.

DEFINE: Defines the 'crust' scarcity condition and the 'Peppe' figure as an enforcer who fills governance gaps, clarifying the economic logic underlying organized crime.

At the heart of this objection lies a conceptual confusion between two very different commodities: whether or not "Peppe" displays mafioso characteristics depends primarily on whether he produces and sells information or guarantees. As I show in the next chapter, if he sells guarantees, he is likely, under certain conditions, to develop mafioso tendencies, whereas if he limits himself to selling information without guaranteeing reliability, he will not. It is crust rather than information that matters.

DEFINE: Distinguishes 'crust' (guaranteeing reliability) from mere information provision as the defining factor in mafioso behavior.

I am a dead man. I bought a dead horse who does not know his way around, wants to follow only the roads he likes, slips and falls on slopes, is frightened by firecrackers and bells, and yesterday he shied and ran into a flock of sheep that was barring the way. A camorrista [the Neapolitan version of a mafioso] who protects me and used to control the horse market would have saved me from this crime. He used to check up on the sales and would get his cut from both buyer and seller. Last year I needed to get rid of a blind horse and he helped me to sell it as a sound one, for he protected me. Now he is in jail, and without him I was forced to buy a bad horse. He was a great gentleman!

DEFINE: Clarifies 'camorrista' as the Neapolitan equivalent of a mafioso who controlled the horse market. Builds on: "Illegal cattle markets rely on informal guarantors to create trust."

Mafiosi are first and foremost entrepreneurs in one particular commodity—protection—and this is what distinguishes them from simple criminals, simple entrepreneurs, or criminal entrepreneurs. Their relatives, friends, and friends of friends may be criminals inasmuch as they deal in illegal goods, but they may equally well be entrepreneurs in legal goods. In both cases these people are not mafiosi but customers, buyers cacher than suppliers of protection. Even in those instances in which mafiosi themselves are involved in some other economic activity, they should be considered, as it were, their own customers.

The fact that, say, the owner of an automobile dealership buys a car from himself does not make him merely a motorise; similarly, the face that a mafioso involved in drug or secondhand car dealing "buys" his own protection does not make him merely a dealer in drugs or used cars. This has been perhaps the most regrettable of several confusions inhibiting a proper understanding of the mafia, as it has systematically conflated the market of the good being protected with the market of protection itself (see, for example, Arlacchi 1983a). As each is subject to sharply differing constraints and opportunities, any successful analysis must preserve a clear distinction between protected commodities and protection as a commodity.

DEFINE: Defines protection as a separate commodity in its own right, distinct from the goods it protects.

Although protectors have an interest in restricting the number of proteges, they are also subject to a countervailing drive to increase it in order to strengthen both their sources of revenue and their independence from any single source. In addition, supporting a monopoly is risky because it provides disappointed competitors with an incentive to seek protection from either police or rival racketeers (Reuter 1987: 6). As we shall see in Chapter 8, it is thus more advantageous to protect groups rather than individual firms.

XREF: Connects to economic theory on monopolies and incentives, and to the reader's broader understanding of criminal governance structures.

If X sets a price, Y (or Z) is free to set a lower one; if Z and Y win customers from X or move into X's area, they are not violating any pact, nor are they considered traitors. Betrayal, loyalty, and friendship—key terms in the mafia lexicon—are, as it were, killed by inflation: everyone is invited to betray everyone else, and friendship never stands in the way of commercial gain. Where choice is governed by price, a "miracle" occurs which no political agreement can easily achieve: the demand for trust is minimized. By contrast, since cartels rely on agreements, defection is a permanent hazard, and the demand for protection, first of all against other members, is intense.

XREF: Connects to economic theory on trust as a market mechanism, and mafia/governance literature on why protection rackets arise where trust is scarce.

It is appropriate, therefore, to interpret the enforcement of agreements within the same analytical framework as dispute settlement. Agreements are transactions in which participants exchange promises instead of ordinary goods. Promises are a peculiar commodity involving a high degree of asymmetry of information: the party who makes the promise knows much more about the likelihood of its being honored than the party who receives it. The actual outcome is the only available test of the quality of a promise. Broken promises can thus be seen as the "lemons" of their kind.

XREF: Connects information asymmetry in agreements to Akerlof's lemons model, the classic adverse-selection framework.

Private protection is not supplied on the basis of principles, let alone universal principles. Like any other market good it is supplied strictly on the basis of opportunity, and opportunities are not always conducive to protecting all sides in a transaction. Whom they protect and how is a matter not of course but of choice—a complex economic choice. (The consequent shifts in the types of protected people have been the cause of much confusion. Mafiosi have been identified with whomever they were protecting at a given moment, and changes of customer have been mistaken for changes in the nature of the mafia.)

XREF: Links to the political science concept that private security follows markets, echoing theories of mafia as a business enterprise (e.g., Gambetta).

A more subtle reason might be that the mafioso, in "guaranteeing" the sale of a blind horse to a victim who is not under his protection, is offering a demonstration by reminding everyone that without his protection, cheating is "guaranteed" to occur. The mafioso himself has an interest in making regulated injections of distrust into the market to increase the demand for the good he sells: protection. If agents were to develop trust among themselves, he would become idle. The income he receives and the power he enjoys are primarily the fruits of distrust.

Builds on: "Market-based protection shifts with opportunity rather than principle"

The first two factors affect the long-term durability of mafia protection: if protection depends heavily on a single individual, it is inevitable that a random accident may suddenly deprive his clients of its benefits. At the same time, if internal competition is such that it creates a high rate of bankruptcy, the accident, fatal at times, may not be that random. In both cases, from the client's point of view reconstructing a protection contract with another firm may be arduous and time-consuming, leaving one temporarily at the mercy of predators (for more on these points, see Chapters 3 and 7).

QUESTION: The distinction between random accidents and non-random (competition-driven) bankruptcies raises the question of how clients distinguish these risks when choosing protection.

It might be thought that if mafiosi protect individuals effectively, the overall number of lemons sold in a society will be reduced. Despite the apparent paradox, however, the opposite is true. This can be shown in a variety of ways (discussed in Chapter 7), but the most general demonstration runs this way. A seller who does not live off only occasional customers and is concerned about his future income has a rational interest in behaving honestly and acquiring a good reputation (Dasgupta 1988; see also Axelrod 1984). Even if dishonest, he still has an interest in sacrificing short-term benefits for the sake of prospective gains. Fundamental to this argument is the assumption that a good standing in business is easily destroyed. The question is whether mafia protection alters this tendency toward self-enforcing honesty.

QUESTION: How exactly does mafia protection undermine the reputation mechanism that normally enforces honest selling? Chapter 7 presumably spells this out. Builds on: "Mafia protection is analytically distinct from the protected commodity."

In short, distrust, once addressed through mafioso protection, becomes self-perpetuating and self-expanding. Distrust, in other words, becomes endogenous and need no longer be thought of as a precondition external to the mafia protection market.

XREF: Relates to self-fulfilling prophecy and market ecology arguments where supply creates its own demand — classic path dependence. Builds on: "Mafiosi profit by deliberately injecting distrust into markets."

Consider the point made in Hume's Treatise on Human Nature (but see also Sugden 1986) that norms of good behavior in business evolve from an economic interest in keeping promises and acquiring a reputation for honest dealing: "Afterwards a sentiment of morals concurs with interest, and becomes a new obligation upon mankind" ( 1969: 574). There being no such interest in Sicily, or only to a limited extent, on account of the protection of the mafia, the likelihood that these norms will become dominant, anticipating experience and giving rise to virtuous circles, is diminished. This may also explain why the opposite norm obtains and the ability to cheat is praised and encouraged.

XREF: Connects to institutional economics and the idea that social norms emerge from repeated economic interactions — fits with game theory and reputation-based cooperation literature. QUESTION: Does mafia protection actively suppress honest-dealing norms, or merely fail to reward them? The causal direction here is worth probing.

The reader may wonder how the foregoing tallies with the commonplace view of the mafia as offering protection from danger and distrust, which the mafia itself creates. The mafia does not, in other words, supply a real service but merely practices extortion. This view is in part the result of an informational bias exaggerating the effect of extortion as opposed to those transactions in which the likelihood of being cheated (or being caught cheating) is truly reduced as a result of protection. We hear more about the former simply because dealers are more likely to talk to the police in this case than in the latter.

DEFINE: Distinguishes genuine protection from mere extortion, clarifying that mafia services can include real enforcement against cheating.

Protection is a peculiar commodity even when it is sold by the most legitimate authority. When we pay taxes or insurance premiums, we pay without receiving anything in return other than the right to use a certain commodity when and if we need it and wane to use it. We pay for it, in other words, even if the service is only a potential one. For instance, we pay for homeowner's insurance in exchange for a kind of financial protection which we may never need. Protection requires an apparatus which must be sustained even when the protection itself is not used.

XREF: Connects to the economics of security, insurance, and state legitimacy — the idea that we pay for potential services. Resonates with broader debates about surveillance and the police as prepaid protective apparatuses.

It must also be stressed that forms of behavior comparable to extortion are rife in the world of ordinary commodities. Imagine that blowing up a shop window was an act of intimidation to extort money from an innocent merchant. In abstract economic terms one might say that chose responsible were trying to increase demand for their product by unfair means. Consider now a company producing cars which puts coven pressure on the government or on individual politicians to spend more money on highways and Jess on railways, irrespective of whether this is in the public interest. The latter example is, in economic terms, precisely analogous to the former: the car company is also trying to increase demand for its produce by unfair means.

XREF: Connects to critiques of corporate rent-seeking and regulatory capture in political economy literature.

If we call this practice extortion, we must also interpret as extortion our paying for a number of other goods which we buy simply to avoid the consequences others impose on us by buying them first. Cars and advertising are two good examples. In a city where most people travel by car, the efficiency of public transport is reduced, and this further encourages more people to buy cars. Similarly, if all firms in an industry pay for advertising, then every new firm planning to enter that industry must take advertising costs into account whether they like it or not. Protection is not dissimilar from other supposedly innocuous commodities based on collective equilibria which are far from ideal.

DEFINE: Clarifies a conceptual extension of 'extortion' to collective equilibrium goods like protection and advertising.

In this case the interests of the protection firm and its customers coincide, for those already paying for protection would prefer that everybody else in the neighborhood pay his share. We arrive at the apparent paradox whereby the standard piece of evidence from which we infer that a dealer is being forced to pay extortion money—for example, a shop window blowing up—might simply mean that he is being punished for free riding at the expense of those around him, who are paying for a commodity from which he benefits without bearing his share of the cost. Forcing people to pay may be analytically equivalent to picketing by a union: there, too, the aim is to make people pay for what they may all eventually get, in this case wage increases.

XREF: Connects to collective action problems and the free-rider problem familiar from Mancur Olson and rational choice theory.

In 1990, for instance, Sicily, with only 9 percent of the total Italian population, accounted for 24 percent of the nationwide number of robberies. Although crime may be related to other causes such as unemployment, it is natural to infer that mafia protection is useless at best and possibly bogus. But even without the benefit of any conspiratorial logic, there is a sound theoretical reason why the presence of the mafia encourages crime. This does not imply that mafia protection is not effective; on the contrary, it is effective—but in protecting the wrong people.

XREF: Connects to the reader's understanding of organized crime economics and how protection rackets function as selective justice.

Ordinary citizens dislike being cheated or robbed. But something we tend to forget is that so do thieves: there is nothing like a dishonest fence to spoil their sleep. They cannot resort to the law, and, being criminals, they have an excellent reason not to trust one another. Thus, thieves need protection badly and, as a result, become particularly eager customers. Correspondingly, if protection is readily available, the temptation to embark on a criminal career increases, since it becomes easier to dispose of stolen goods or to avoid retaliation.

What is understood elsewhere as a crime is here regarded as a particular kind of dispute between two parties. Legal convention neatly distinguishes victims from perpetrators, but in mafia terms the right not to be robbed (or kidnapped or cheated) is greater than the right to rob or kidnap or cheat only if the victim's value to the protector is likewise greater. In fact, there is no such thing as rights. If a thief pays well enough, he qualifies for protection just like anybody else. Mafiosi have no prejudices in this regard. Prerogatives are allocated to the highest bidder, who need not be the richest.

An old argument contends that mafia have good reasons not to push their demands too far because, as Franchetti ( 1974) claims, "If the villains made use of their destructive abilities to an extreme degree, they would soon lack the very matter from which to steal" (p. 126). This is less a theoretical than an empirical observation, for it does not hold under all circumstances. The extent to which it does hold depends on the mafioso's time horizon: as it shortens, the temptation to prey grows. As with all dealers, if the future looks uncertain, protectors will maximize present over future income. They will be more likely either to sell bogus protection or to charge extortionate prices for it, or both. Moreover, they will have an incentive to arbitrate between criminals and victims rather than systematically protect the latter or, worse, protect only delinquents. Finally, if customers know that the mafioso's "life expectancy" is short, they will be reluctant to buy protection. Consequently, mafiosi need to employ energetic forms of promotion. In brief, as the time horizon shrinks, protection approaches extortion. Conversely, mafiosi who see a long future in business ahead of them, or ahead of their descendants, are less likely to harass customers for fear of risking future income. They will also be more likely to protect victims rather than robbers or cheaters, and, correspondingly, dealers will also feel more relaxed about purchasing protection.

As for the production and sale of commodities, performing "Peppe's" role requires certain resources. Let us conduct a thought experiment and ask ourselves how we would go about producing and selling guarantees and protection. Assume, therefore, that among our options for a career, if not necessarily a brilliant one, is that of becoming a "Peppe." If we live in a country where there is already an established class of "Peppes," our imagination is less severely taxed by envisioning this possibility; also the costs of apprenticeship are reduced relative to those for someone who must start from scratch.

XREF: Connects to economic literature on barriers to entry and how incumbent industries reduce costs for later entrants, echoing ideas about learning spillovers and established market infrastructure.

According to Leopoldo Franchetti, the acceptance of violence in Palermo is due, among other things, to the "large number of bravi [thugs] in the service of the lords residing in Palermo and whose descendants have preserved the family tradition" ( 1974: 94, 98). The ability to accept bloodshed, in other words, is not a subcultural characteristic but a specific skill which, like more pacific skills, can be transmitted from one generation to the next. In earliest childhood, then, we would have learned that trust is a scarce resource in our world, and that while this lack makes life difficult, it can also turn out to be profitable.

XREF: Connects to broader arguments about learned rather than innate violence, echoing ideas in criminology and cultural learning theory.

When still a schoolboy the American gangster Charles ("Lucky") Luciano noticed that some of the older Irish and Italian kids were waylaying the younger and smaller Jewish kids on their way home from school, beating and robbing them. [Lucky] turned this to his profit. For a penny or two a day, he sold his protection to the potential victims. If they paid they could be sure that their daily trips to and from school would be made in safety, for though young [Lucky] was never a giant, he was tough enough and old enough to make his promise of protection stick.

DEFINE: Illustrates the origin of the protection racket concept through Luciano's childhood extortion scheme.

A retired boss recounted that when he was a young boy, his mafioso father made him climb a wall and then invited him to jump, promising to catch him. He at first refused, but his father insisted until finally he jumped—and promptly landed flat on his face. The wisdom his father sought to convey was summed up by these words: "You must learn to distrust even your parents."

Omertà, although etymologically related to manliness and strength, has come to signify specifically the capacity for maintaining silence under adverse conditions, presumably because this quality is held by those who value it to be one of the manly virtues. In particular, the term traditionally refers to the silence a large sector of the Sicilian population is capable of maintaining in the face of public inquiries into crime, and their general reluctance to talk to strangers. The mafia represents the quintessence of this capacity for secrecy, which, along with the capacity for violence, usually heads the list of mafioso attributes. Against this view I argue that secrecy vis-à-vis the authorities is but one of several forms of secrecy, and perhaps not the most important one. Hand in hand with secrecy goes information, a fundamental aspect of the business which has hitherto been virtually ignored. Furthermore, secrecy and intelligence are not mythic cultural codes but necessary attributes if one is to trade in protection.

XREF: Challenges the romanticized view of 'omertà' as mere cultural virtue; reframes Mafia secrecy as economic strategy — a parallel to Gambetta's signaling theory.

Our clients, too, need to know that we know something about them; otherwise they would not take us as credible guarantors. Our capacity for gathering information is part of our reputation. They may even have an interest in deliberately disclosing certain details about themselves, for each party understands that the other will be encouraged to enter into the transaction if he knows that we, as guarantor, are in possession of privileged information. They need not necessarily know what we know about the other; indeed, it is better if they do not, for if our position as monopolist over information is weakened, they may learn to exchange without our guarantees or even step in as potential guarantors themselves. but they must at least believe that we know enough to keep the other party in line.

XREF: Relates to intermediary/information-asymmetry economics and the role of trust in transaction security.

In general, we can expect to be better at protecting all transactions over a small territory rather than some over a variety of territories. The area where we were born or have lived longest is the best in which to begin operations, for there we know every resident and every street corner. Simply frequenting the right places—bars, shops, the bank, the church—is sufficient to bring useful information to our attention. We can monitor directly the reliability of the information we collect. We are likely to have a higher concentration of friends and relatives here than elsewhere, and they represent cheap and trustworthy sources of information. Women talk to other women, children to other children, and report back to us.

XREF: Connects to the principle that dense local social networks provide cheap, reliable information — parallel to how legitimate small businesses benefit from community embeddedness, described in Jane Jacobs' works on neighborhood economics.

Similar reasoning applies to secrecy. While secrecy is the most elementary means of practicing self-protection, vis-à-vis both rivals and the state, it is primarily a requirement for selling protection to others, for if our customers know anything which can be used against us, our position as guarantor is weakened since it is difficult to control someone who can fight back. Leading a discreet life, allowing only creditable information to filter out—these are essential prerequisites for selling our product. Omertà is not, as many have suggested, merely a traditional code which has matured over long periods of foreign domination and is now inertially retained, nor is it simply a means of keeping the state out of our business. It is a crucial part of our ability to serve as an entrepreneur of protection. This is one of the differences between selling protection and selling cars. Whereas in the latter case our private life is not necessarily an indication of how reliable our cars will be, in the case of protection, although what is considered honorable may be historically mutable, what we are—or what we appear to be—counts as one of the most important signs of good faith.

DEFINE: Reworks omertà from a traditional cultural code into a functional economic requirement for selling protection as a service. Builds on: "Mafia secrecy is purposeful protection trade, not mere culture"

In conclusion, the notion of omertà as a culturally specific code of behavior essential to understanding the mafia seems to be, if not mistaken, at least superfluous. On the one hand, the policy of discretion is analytically identical to the measures taken by many different businesses to protect their industrial secrets. IBM, for instance, spends $50 million a year to guard its secrets and exerts particularly energetic pressure on its employees, both when they are recruited and when they leave (Freemantle 1986: 63ff.). On the other hand, it is just one aspect of a general attitude toward information gathering and manipulation—an attitude which relies as much on concealment as on revelation.

XREF: Connects to readings on organizational secrecy and how legitimate corporations protect industrial secrets similarly to criminal groups.

But violence is not employed for enforcement purposes alone; competition among guarantors is perhaps the most common reason for its use. Protectors compete in terms of toughness: he who fights hardest not only eliminates his vanquished competitors but also advertises himself to customers as a reliably tough character. Several accounts in the literature describe how honor—better defined as the reputation for supplying credible protection—among mafiosi is a variable attribute which has nothing to do with birth (see Hess 1973; Arlacchi 1983). By winning violent contests, a mafioso increases his honor at the expense of potential or established competitors in what amounts to a zero-sum game (see Bonanno 1983: 127).

DEFINE: Defines mafioso 'honor' as the earned reputation for supplying credible protection, not a birthright — a contestable, zero-sum commodity.

Toughness is a quality lacking in subtlety, for one either has it or does not. There is no coming in second best, only winning or losing. While the quality of most commodities is distributed over a continuous scale with products at every level, the ability to resort successfully to violence functions as a dichotomous variable: that is, within any given context one and only one supplier has what it takes, and if buyers cannot count on his services, they can never feel safe. Thus we see an additional reason why the protection market is monopolistic.

DEFINE: Clarifies why the protection market is naturally monopolistic rather than graded like typical commodities.

Exactly why "Peppe" resorts so frequently to violence, however, is not easy to establish. Not all punishments are violent, and often force is used as nothing more than an implicit threat in the bargaining process. Nonetheless, conflict escalates into violence in Sicily with notorious frequency, a fact that is remarkable not on empirical grounds, given what we know of mafia practices, but in terms of theoretical expectations. The range of possible sanctions which fall short of violence would seem sufficient to relegate the use of force to the background and still allow the supply of effective protection. If any evolution can be detected in legal economic affairs it is coward subtle contractual forms which exclude the threat of violence to deter defectors. Commercial defeat and physical defeat are increasingly divergent. If the mafia could offer protection without undue recourse to violence, it would seem rational to do so, as the corresponding risks and costs should be fewer. So why is it, then, that violence features so prominently in the career and reputation of a mafioso? Why are mafia groups traditionally so militarized?

QUESTION: The passage poses an unresolved puzzle: why does the mafia resort to violence when non-violent sanctions would suffice and cost less? This invites further investigation into reputation and signaling functions of violence.

Dealers in protection are no exception. As in all other businesses, a good reputation attracts customers and keeps competitors at bay. But it does significantly more than that. By far the most striking feature of a mafioso's reputation is that it saves directly on production costs. Car manufacturers benefit from a good reputation, but they still have to produce cars. By contrast, a reputation for credible protection and protection itself tend to be one and the same thing. The more robust the reputation of a protection firm, the less the need to have recourse to the resources which support that reputation.

It follows that both the client and the real mafioso have an interest in promoting unambiguous identification. The false mafioso, by contrast, has an interest in blurring the distinction. While the genuine article tries to generate signals which cannot be pirated, the fake tries to imitate those signals. In this market protectors have to fight hard to prove their authenticity, and the problems of identification and counterfeiting reach obsessive proportions.

It does not follow that a lasting reputation can grow out of thin air. On the contrary, the need for a practical test of one's authenticity eventually becomes pressing. Ultimately, the test consists in the ability to use violence both at the outset of one's career and later, when an established reputation is under attack from authentic and bogus rivals alike (a rival who loses can always be said to have been bogus).

XREF: Connects to reputation economics and signaling theory — authenticity must be proven through costly display, echoing how feuds authenticate status. Builds on: "Genuine and fake mafiosos have opposing identification incentives."

Protection, by contrast, can only be good or bad. Reputation among mafiosi is a variable best represented as dichotomous rather than continuous. Its reliance on violence is such that one either comes out on top or is worthless, a common mortal as untrustworthy and powerless as anyone else. The loss of reputation, therefore, is correspondingly catastrophic and impossible to remedy. It causes not just the loss of a fraction of one's business but its disappearance altogether: the very ownership of the firm evaporates with it.

DEFINE: Contrasts reputation (dichotomous, zero-sum) with continuous variables like protection, explaining why loss is catastrophic and unrecoverable. Builds on: "Mafia violence functions as competition for clientele among protectors."

These minor services rarely require monetary compensation but are rendered for free, at most creating an unspecified debt whose settlement is postponed. Still, they perform a valuable economic function in the mafioso's strategy: like a free wine tasting, they offer a sample of his abilities, boost his reputation, and indirectly mock the public authorities incapable of recovering the cherished necklace, a gift from one's dear deceased grandmother, snatched on the street.

XREF: Connects to marketing and behavioral economics on free trials and sampling as trust-building mechanisms, applied unexpectedly to organized crime. Builds on: "Violent action tests and sustains an authentic reputation."

Folklore aside, what these "Don Peppes" are doing amounts essentially to advertising. This peculiar form of sponsorship—the sponsor is the mafioso, the saint his innocent beneficiary—relies, like all publicity, on contemporary beliefs and exploits both the general attributes of sanctity and those specific to each individual saint. In this case it signals to the world at large that Don Peppe's "protection firm" is so powerful as to offer its earthly protection even to a protector par excellence. Thus the language of Catholicism may serve to enhance the reputation of the mafia firm. But advertising must adjust itself to the people's values. In the more secular United States, John Gotti, the man who, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is the "boss of bosses," organizes annually at his own expense a celebrated fireworks display. Although he does not concern himself overmuch with saints, like his Sicilian counterparts he revels in charity and good works, clear signs of a noble and honorable character, regardless of religious beliefs

When visual or musical material protected by copyright is used in advertising, one must seek permission and often pay for it. How, then, can images and names of saints, which might be considered symbols under the copyright of the church, be used by mafiosi? Are they being blasphemous, pirating the saints against the church's will? Or do they enjoy at least a tacit blessing?

QUESTION: Do mafiosi enjoy the church's tacit blessing, or is this appropriation a form of symbolic piracy? XREF: Connects to discussions of cultural appropriation of religious imagery and the blurred line between sacred symbols and copyrighted intellectual property.

A likely beginning of the association between the church and informal networks of power in Sicily dates back at least to Italian Unification in 1861. Immediately after Unification, hostility between church and state became acute, mainly as a result of the expropriation of the church's property and estates and the general anticlericalism of the early Italian liberals (Marino 1986: 231ff.). In 1877 Pope Pius IX rejected the legitimacy of the newly formed Italian state and ruled that no Catholic could run, or indeed vote, in national elections. Catholics could, however, take part in local elections, which provided the church a further incentive to establish a liaison with local political groups as opposed to national ones.

XREF: Connects to broader patterns of church-state conflict in post-unification Italy and the church's turn to local networks elsewhere in Europe.

Until after the First World War there is virtually no record of church intervention or complaint against the mafia (for one exception, see Marino 1986: 235). Even under the Fascist regime, when the state became actively more sympathetic toward the church, the attitude of the clergy remained ambiguous. A few bishops in Sicily, after considerable delay, finally in 1927 gave formal support to Cesare Mori's fierce antimafia campaign, even though a number of priests were implicated in the ensuing trials

XREF: Contrasts with common assumptions about church-mob relations in works like The Godfather or broader Italian organized crime literature.

This fundamental stance of covert blessing, or at best equivocal detachment, especially at the local level, has never really changed. Prominent mafiosi not only are allowed to sponsor processions in honor of a variety of saints but also are regularly married in and buried by the church. For some young men it is normal to hesitate between a career in the clergy and one in the mafia, since in small villages the two institutions appear to be plausible associative options.

During a press conference in 1989 the cardinal of Naples, Michele Giordano, implied that the church was about to excommunicate all those defined by a court verdict as mafiosi (or camorristi). The news, widely reported in the media, was subsequently denied on the grounds that, according to canonic law, they had been excommunicated already, automatically, as it were. What is interesting about this episode is not so much that this radical measure was being considered so late but that it was considered at all. It reveals how well the church understands what excommunication would mean to mafiosi, possibly damaging their reputation by amounting to a withdrawal of the "advertising copyright" on saints and ceremonies. Excommunication is meaningful only to those close enough to the church to mind. The average criminal would laugh at such a measure.

The list of the mafia's documented customers, in both legal and illegal businesses, is long and varied. Landowners, herdsmen, olive and orange growers, peasants, entrepreneurs, politicians, doctors, shopkeepers, purse snatchers, smugglers, drug traffickers, arms dealers: all of them have at one point or another been protected.

Some customers enter into one-time-only protection deals with mafiosi, deals which begin and end with a specific transaction. Others, perhaps most, are organically connected to the family, as relatives or friends of the capo and his acolytes, or even as properly initiated members.

Contrary to widespread belief, the refusal to buy protection is not met with outright violence. Building contractors interviewed in Palermo all assert that mafiosi do not kill recalcitrant customers; at worst they harass them, causing damage to property and so on. The entrepreneurs who are murdered are those who have breached an agreement or become informers (I-1, I-3, I-4).

QUESTION: If refusal doesn't trigger killing, what actually motivates the violence? This complicates the common picture of organized crime enforcement.

In the first place, they would waste their time bargaining every month. But there would also be two other, more serious consequences if the contract were only intermittently renewed: Mr. X would be vulnerable to predators in his unprotected months and so could not make long-term plans for investment; and, Don Peppe would be obliged to keep indicating to predators when Mr. X was untouchable and when he was fair game. The undesirable effects would be twofold: predators might become confused and attack Mr. X in the wrong month; alternatively, Mr. X might remain safe during a month when he had not paid, thereby enjoying free protection. In addition, Don Peppe could not easily monitor all former clients who might continue to use his name even when they were no longer paying for the right.

XREF: Connects to the logic of protection rackets and how recurring-payment models solve enforcement and signaling problems for both parties.

Where la fede privata (the private trust) prevails (Pagden 1988), the family embodies the archetypal protection contract in its elementary form, whereby men are expected to protect weaker members, who in exchange accept the high price of submitting to the will of their protectors. By contrast, where the state protects its individual members effectively, the family to a certain extent forfeits this function, and the price paid by the protectees to fathers, uncles, and husbands is correspondingly less exorbitant. Thus, the linguistic association of the mafia with family and belonging—famiglia, capo famiglia, zio, padre, picciotti, è cosa di, è cosa nostra, appartiene a—is not just analogical but substantively accurate.

XREF: Connects to political theory about the state's monopoly on protection and the social contract tradition, where weak public institutions correlate with strong private patronage networks.

Above all, owning a protection firm means owning a name, a reputation for supplying convincing protection. Unfortunately, however, the nature of reputation is such that the assets based on it are elusive, fragile, difficult to bequeath or trade. Property rights, as an economic rather than a legal concept, concern the power of an individual to profit from and alienate, or transfer, a particular asset (Barzel 1989: 2). While... quite clear that income can be derived from owning a name as a mafioso, the power to alienate the ownership of that name suffers from severe limitations which make it particularly difficult for a protection firm to protect its own property rights.

XREF: Connects to intellectual property and brand economics — reputation behaves like an intangible asset that owners struggle to alienate.

In addition to the right to transfer, a second feature which commonly defines property rights is the power to sell. There are, to my knowledge, no recorded cases in which the actual sale of a mafia "firm" has taken place. There are reasons to assume that the process would be cumbersome, perhaps impossibly so. Suppose a prospective buyer informed the boss that he wanted to buy the firm, including customers, work force, networks, and all. Suppose, furthermore, that the boss consented· and they agreed on a price. This would be just the beginning. The whole network of clients and employees would have to be informed, and would have to agree, since they are bound specifically to the present owner. Lacking agreement, some might begin to pull out, initiating a chain reaction which would make credibility crumble until nothing was left to buy or sell.

Any bidder whose reputation was such that a purchase could succeed would presumably be in a position to acquire the property without bothering to buy it: he could simply take over, challenging the boss and threatening to pay in lead rather than silver, the latter being interpreted as a sign of weakness. In addition, if the buyer's reputation was better than that of the present boss, customers would be driven to him anyway. In either case it would be up to the challenged boss to decide whether to declare war or retire. … The crucial difference between a prospective buyer and an appointed successor—the difference which makes succession possible—is that the latter earns his reputation by working his way up within the firm itself. He is therefore more likely to wait, because of filial or other bonds of respect, until his predecessor's graceful exit.

There is no evidence of separation between managerial and proprietorial roles in protection firms, a factor that, once again, has to do with the nature of protection itself. Even if owners did wish to rid themselves of the managerial burden, they would be unlikely to do so for the simple reason that they could all too easily be robbed of the firm by their managers. To run the firm, one must be in command; and to be in command means, effectively, to own.

DEFINE: Clarifies why protection firms structurally cannot separate ownership from control — managers could seize the firm, so command equals ownership.

It becomes clear why every so often a surprisingly old man is executed. In a world where information is even more imperfect than usual, reputation has an inertial force and may be difficult to shake off. Thus, people in a hurry choose this means of informing dilatory customers that their old supplier is no longer reliable, if for no other reason than that he is dead.

QUESTION: What specific historical context is this describing? Which society or time period formalized execution as a way to signal a supplier's unreliability?

Deliberately getting oneself arrested or placed in obligatory confinement (soggiorno obbligato), at times with the complicity of one's rivals and even potential murderers, is a strategy known to have been employed by mafiosi to stay alive. Short of death itself, in fact, imprisonment is the clearest signal that one is out of the market. Giuseppe Calderone was offered such an opportunity after Stefano Bontade's death. He did not accept, and was killed. By contrast, Antonino Salamone, the boss of San Giuseppe Jato, spent many years abroad, running his family from afar and counting on Bontade's powerful support in Sicily to curb his lieutenant's desire for power. Once Bontade was killed, however, Salamone returned in 1982 and went straight to the police in order to submit to the soggiorno obbligato to which he had been sentenced years before.

QUESTION: Whether deliberate confinement actually reduces target risk, or merely signals withdrawal from the market to rivals, merits investigation.

Although the roles of owner and manager cannot be separated, the same is not true of a mafioso and his reputation. In principle, the mafioso would benefit from such a separation. If name alone were sufficient to command loyalty and fair play, ownership would be flexible—that is, easier to transfer and bequeath—and the field of operations much broader than that sustained by direct personal contacts. True, there would also be drawbacks, for when reputation is divorced from particular individuals, it becomes that much easier for impostors to pass themselves off as agents of "Don Peppe, Inc." Still, the fact that this distinction rarely occurs in practice is not structural but simply contingent on the fact that the law makes it difficult to advertise protection services by generalized and impersonal means, which in turn makes it even more difficult for mafia firms to expand beyond limited circles.

DEFINE: Clarifies that the fusion of mafioso and reputation is a legal contingency, not a structural necessity.

In the Japanese yakuza, which enjoys a greater official tolerance than its Sicilian counterpart, ikka (family) names are not determined by the name of the boss; they have an openly acknowledged significance and are transmitted through a succession system which rules out sons as heirs (Iwai 1986). In the mafia, by contrast, the reputation of a firm often depends on customers' knowing who occupies the key positions and seldom, at least in Sicily, reaches a point where the name of a family generates credibility irrespective of who carries it. The name of a family is also the name of its head. As Buscetta explained in court, "The Inzerillo family still exists, but it changed its name. It is no longer Inzerillo; the head of the family is Buscemi" (TB-GdS, April 6, 1986).

XREF: Contrasts with how corporate reputation attaches to individuals in Western institutions, and echoes the distinction between institutional and personal legitimacy studied in political science.

The beginnings of a process of separation, however, can be observed in two instances. The first is among the five families of the New York mafia—the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese, Colombo, and Lucchese families. These have become famous names, not quire fictitious but no longer entirely real either, which are preserved even though none of the families is now ruled by the founder after whom it was named in the 1930s, nor do they appear to be run by sons or relatives. While the families themselves have been unable to advertise effectively, the mass media and law enforcement agencies have unwittingly done the job for them. Publicity, no matter how horrific, has conferred on those names an almost mythical status. Just as the name Ferrari or Jaguar elicits an immediate response among lovers of sports cars, names such as Gambino and Bonanno evoke an equally immediate response, if of a somewhat different nature.

XREF: Connects to the author's broader argument about separation and institutional persistence, and parallels the branding of products versus criminal organizations. SEED: Potential article angle on how negative publicity functions as unintentional branding for criminal organizations versus traditional marketing.

There is a natural tendency to assign delicate tasks to men with stable ties to the firm. Tommaso Buscetta claims that killers are never recruited on the market for a single job (TB: III, 138); they are always members of one kind or other. There are occasional examples of spies and killers drawn from among the easy-to-blackmail denizens of the criminal world; but these individuals risk disappearing soon after they have accomplished their task, as they become dangerous as well as expendable. Giuseppe Scozzari, a petty thief and drug dealer operating in Turin, went to Sicily on a murder assignment on behalf of a local boss, was wounded in action, and had to be rescued by his brother-in-law and brought back to Turin, where he vanished. His remains were found in a well in the countryside four years later (OSAG: 383-386).

XREF: Connects to readings on organized crime structure and why illicit organizations rely on social ties over market hiring.

In case of a labor shortage one firm may ask another's help in seeking new recruits (VM: 7). In several instances employees are lent among firms (VM: 27), even at the highest level. The murder of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and his wife in 1982 was allegedly part of an exchange deal between the Palermo and Catania families. The former had disposed of the deputy boss of the Catania group, who was becoming troublesome, and the latter, returning the favor, carried out the general's execution (TB-GdS; TC-GdS; TB: I, 71).

Full-time labor is provided by underlings directly dependent on the head of the firm. It is here, among the rank and file, where the possibility of career advancement, up to and including ownership of the firm, begins (see Chapter 5). Recruitment depends on spying skills, on knowing how to mind one's own business, and on the ability to become an executioner on demand. In 1973 Leonardo Vitale made a wide-ranging confession to the police following a "mystical crisis." The act which had won Vitale admission to the mafia was the murder of a man guilty of acquiring leaseholds on land in the area controlled by Vitale's uncle without asking permission (OSPA Stajano: chap. 1).

XREF: Connects to broader organized crime structure literature and to the Vitale confession referenced across chapters.

Every now and then [my boss] used to send me to see someone in need of some kind of settlement [sistemazione], mostly matters of little importance. They concerned conflicts between shop keepers or farmers, people who wanted to take revenge for a theft or a wrong they had suffered. Things of this kind. The price was open, and the profit all came to me. I was good at getting a high price. Without having to say it in so many words, I let [my customers] know that the matter had been a difficult one and that somebody had pulled a gun on me. ([Russo] 1988: 105)

Finally, mafia firms are not equal-opportunity employers. Women are discriminated against without exception. Nor do the firms offer their employees the usual benefits, although there is the occasional pension or compensation for on-the-job hazards such as time spent in prison or disabilities incurred in shooting accidents or attempts to escape from the police (VS: I, 152). "It is customary," according to Buscetta, "that when a man of honor is arrested and does not have enough money, as in my case, the head of the family appoints a lawyer and covers other minor expenses that arise during detention" (TB: I, 94-95). Matters are not so clear-cut if it is the head of the family himself who runs into trouble. In the 1970s the mafia boss in the town of Vallelunga was sentenced to soggiorno obbligato in the North of Italy and was promptly abandoned by the family. He complained that since he was not receiving any economic assistance, he was forced to work, and as he was unskilled in any hut the mafioso trade, he had to "andare a zappare" (go dig in the fields). Unmoved, the family deposed him (AC: I, 54).

XREF: Connects to the broader economics-of-crime literature where criminal organizations are analyzed as firms with internal labor practices.

Suppose P1—whether buyer or seller—feels dissatisfied with M1's services, say, because he believes that M1 is favoring P2's interests over his own. Suppose further that no complaint on the part of P1 has had any effect on M1. Three outcomes are then possible. First, if no other mafioso (or state) is available (at least none of comparable strength)—in other words, if M1 has a monopoly on protection—the situation is straightforward: P1 has no alternative because no one else is able to help him. (One condition for supplying credible protection is that P1 and P2, both individually and together, must be weaker than M1; otherwise P1 could take the matter into his own hands.) Suppose, by contrast, that there is competition in the market: another mafia firm (M2), wielding power comparable to that of M1, supplies protection. In this case P1 has the option of enlisting M2's protection against M1. This brings us to the two remaining possibilities: M2 faces a choice between intervening in favor of P1 (ultimately risking a war with M1) or abstaining from intervention altogether.

One way to avoid competition is to isolate customers from competitors, either by exploiting natural or commercial barriers or by taking deliberate action (regulating information, using coercion, or some combination of the two). This type of regulation is easier if the protection market and the geographical territory coincide, as customers are more readily policed within territorial than functional boundaries. Enforcement is also easier when transactions are limited to individuals operating within those territorial boundaries. As soon as the flow of information, commodities, and people comes, for whatever reason, under pressure to expand to other locations, this solution no longer suffices. The pressure on previously independent protection firms to come together and find a new equilibrium grows accordingly.

Given the instability of any equilibrium based solely on mutual fear, does it follow that agents will seek explicit agreements to ensure the peace? Not necessarily; nor can the decision to do so be fully accounted for by theory alone, for there is no inescapable equilibrium. Here we stumble into the much less predictable realm of politics. We may assume that the costs of war will provide reasonable agents with sufficient incentive to negotiate agreements to soften the impact of events such as those I have just described and develop the kind of organizational arrangements capable of enforcing such agreements among themselves. But history is full of counterexamples, and not just because unreasonable men can attain positions of power, but precisely because all agreements need enforcement. (If we were all true to our word all the time the notions of protection and trust simply would not exist.) Enforcement in this case requires an authority capable not merely of protecting ordinary buyers from old-fashioned equine lemons but of protecting protection firms from one another. To be effective this authority must be powerful enough to punish individual defectors as well as potential coalitions. Where can such a superagency be found? And who would be in a position to keep it in check? It would itself have to be a protection firm, a mafia. At best the enforcing superagency could be created from a coalition of the stronger firms which agree to cooperate in punishing defectors. The end result would be a hierarchical oligopoly in which smaller firms shelter at some cost under the wings of their larger brothers, which cooperate in maintaining the overall territorial agreement. But there would be no one else to en force that cooperation.

QUESTION: The passage ends mid-thought about a coalition of stronger firms. Where does this lead — a monopoly of force, or a fragile stable coalition? Worth tracking the author's resolution.

To merit the title of mafioso it is not sufficient simply to use violence or commit a crime in Sicily, to belong to a fraternity or guild, or to have a particular occupation. These attributes do not in themselves axiomatically add up to the definition of a mafioso. We are looking for characters who specialize in protection, not for violent entrepreneurs but for entrepreneurs of violence. Moreover, we are looking not for protectors who are systematically dependent on only one parry to a given transaction bur for those who can choose to serve the interests of the more profitable side.

DEFINE: Sharpens the definition of mafioso: a specialist who sells protection and can choose which side to serve, distinct from mere criminals or guild members.

The mafia may be a solution, however perverse, to the problem of distrust, but it is not the only one. Some parts of the South found no solution at all, and these degenerated into miserable places in which to live. In the village explored by Edward Banfield (1958) lack of trust plainly remained uncompensated, while other towns, such as Pisticci (Davis 1975), developed a system of patronage rather than a mafia. Still others established pockets of civil society on a par with those throughout the rest of Italy. Hence, there must be some additional factor that accounts for the origin of the mafia.

Unlike most other commentators, Franchetti saw the mafia as an industry, "l'industria della violenza." Although he did not think of it as modern in any conventional sense, he did not simply dismiss it as the product of an unrelenting past, an offshoot of a diehard feudalism or a precapitalist form of production. Rather, in sharp contrast to subsequent interpretations (see, for example, Sereni 1971: 161), he located the mafia squarely among the products of the end of feudalism and the beginning of a democratic society.

XREF: Connects to broader debates about mafia origins, contrasting with Sereni's interpretation of mafia as feudal remnant.

Autonomy was the key element missing in other parts of the Mediterranean. Its absence prevented countries such as Greece from developing a mafia despite the widespread existence of armed gangs, bandies, and outlaws and the difficulty of imposing effective state control during the nineteenth century (Koliopoulos 1987).

DEFINE: The passage clarifies that mafia formation depends on political autonomy rather than mere state weakness or armed gang presence.

At the same time, protection—the demand for which was dramatically increased by the abolition of feudalism and the widespread introduction of private property rights—did not undergo the customary process of centralization to become the monopoly of the state. Unlike land, protection, according to standard political theory, is not supposed to find its way onto the marker; but in southern Italy It did.

XREF: Connects to the economics of private protection and the theory of state formation, relevant to mafia history literature and institutional economics.

The effort to repress private force and establish reliable public policing began in 1781, even before the formal abolition of feudalism, and was led by the Viceroy Francesco Caracciolo. Laws and decrees forbidding the bearing of arms were promulgated by the Bourbons in 1806, 1808 (when dueling was outlawed), 1815-16, and 1819, but to no avail. In 1822, and then again in 1827 and 1828, new laws were passed to encourage people to surrender their weapons; but they remained a common accessory in men's fashion through the 1880s, for all social classes. Frances Elliot ( 1987), who traveled to Sicily in 1880-81 , attended a party given for the city elite by Palermo's leading industrialist, Count Ignazio Florio. She observed: "What struck me most was the sight in the lobby of a table literally covered with all sorts of weapons, handguns, revolvers, knives, sticks, daggers, left by the people invited together with their hats! Such is life in Palermo!" (p. 108).

XREF: Connects to histories of state monopoly on violence, e.g., Weber's account, and to long-running weak-state dynamics in southern Italy. Builds on: "Autonomy, not weak states, is the key mafia ingredient."

Views on how and where the mafia did appear are more disparate, but the number of meaningful hypotheses is reducible to three. The mafia evolved in areas marked by: (1) economic conflict over the management and appropriation of land and related resources; (2) mobile wealth and numerous transactions, as in urban markets; and (3) political conflict among local factions, especially in connection with the institutional changes effected by the Italian state between 1869 and 1890.

DEFINE: Distills the three hypothesized conditions for mafia emergence: land-resource conflict, mobile wealth in urban markets, and political faction conflict amid Italian state institutional changes.

A classic explanation—once again offered by Franchetti—is that in eastern Sicily "the upper class has managed to preserve the monopoly over force and has so far prevented villains rising from the lower classes from sharing it" ( 1974: 55). The ruling classes on the peaceful side of the island were a more cohesive and less absentee group, and thus were able to lead the transition to a postfeudal society smoothly and without the social tension that prevailed in the west. Apparently unaware of his illustrious predecessor, Pino Arlacchi (1983b) invokes virtually the same reasoning to explain the absence of the mafia in the latifundia, or great landed estates, of the Crotonese area in Calabria: "Where the violent and rebellious elsewhere became bandits and mafiosi, in the Crotonese a significant number became paid hirelings of the barons.... The private police of the latifundia remained fundamentally different from the mafia. They were, and always remained, dependent employees, mere executors of orders from above, without their own authority or even delegation of power" (p. 155).

XREF: Connects to the broader literature on state capacity, elite control of violence, and why organized crime emerges where states/elites fail to monopolize force.

This theory, at first glance, seems to contradict the model constructed in this book, according to which the mafia emerges where there are abundant opportunities for supplying protection and where economic activity is most intense. A rural economy based on large estates with a limited variety of produce and linked to the outside world by a limited number of elementary transactions is an improbable context for the development of a protection industry.

QUESTION: This apparent contradiction between the author's model and an alternative rural-economy theory warrants chasing. What does the resolution reveal about where protection industries actually form?

If any convincing identity is to be established for the mafia, it must be sought in the process of autonomization. Otherwise one cannot speak meaningfully of the mafia at all. At most, what preceded autonomy was mere muscle-flexing, with the real thing yet to come.

Where wages are low and peasant life is less comfortable, in Patti, Castroreale, Siracusa, and Trapani, there are no symptoms of mafia [activity], and public safety is the same as in the most peaceful towns of the kingdom.... By contrast, in Misilmeri and Parrinico, Monreale and Bagheria, where property is divided, where there is plenty of work for everyone, and the orange trees enrich landowners and growers alike—these are the typical sites of mafia influence.

DEFINE: Defines the condition for mafia activity as tied to economic opportunity and property, not poverty — prosperity creates protection rackets worth extorting.

Public and parliamentary inquiries devoted to the Sicilian countryside in the early 1900s include no mention of the gabelloti as a significant criminal problem (Duggan 1988).

XREF: Implication that the gabelloti's criminalization or rise in power may be a later or more complex phenomenon than assumed — relates to historical construction of criminal categories.

The price of protection was therefore higher, since the independence of the protector was greater relative to that of the protectee—so high, in fact, that Lupo refers to guardiania as a "racket." Moreover, unlike his counterparts inland, the guardiano lived not on the estate but nearby in the city and as a deterrent relied on his reputation rather than his physical presence. By living in the city, the mafioso was free to put his reputation to a number of uses—that is, to attract a wider variety of customers—such as providing buyers with guarantees of the quality of produce

XREF: Connects to broader readings on organized crime economics and how reputation functions as capital in informal markets.

Both these societies were under the protection of "powerful mafiosi." Members of the Mulini paid a fee to the società and agreed not to compete with one another. They maintained the price of flour by regulating output, taking turns in cutting back production, and receiving appropriate compensation. The Mulini were bound to hire only members of the Posa. Furthermore, the latter paid protection in kind by acting as enforcers on behalf of the capo mafia and were occasionally recruited to subjugate any orange growers who were reluctant to employ guardiani close to the capo mafia.

Although Franchetti does not go into detail, we can infer that such complex collusion required a high degree of mutual trust, and that this was exactly what the capo mafia provided. It was he who ensured that all members paid their dues; that the miller whose turn it was to underproduce did not cheat and produce more than he was supposed to and that the others did not cheat him either by failing to pay the arranged compensation or by failing to restrict production when their turn came

QUESTION: This suggests mafia bosses function as cartel managers rather than mere criminals — worth exploring how the enforcer role generalizes to other collusive arrangements. XREF: Connects to classic cartel and collective-action problems (Olson, Ostrom) where trust and enforcement mechanisms solve free-rider dilemmas.

It is in these more diverse groups that I believe the protection industry actually originated. Each member counted on the group as a whole for reputation and support and then acted as guarantor-protector in a cartel arrangement. Thus, the mafioso protecting millers, whether or not he was a miller himself, was also part of another group, the local mafia, which incorporated people involved in different occupations who provided the same service.

It is not easy to ascertain the exact relationship of these groups to the mafia, and scholars are at a loss when it comes to answering this question. They were conglomerates—a mixture of cartels, unions, and syndicates—which for a variety of reasons benefited from protection, either by supplying it or by making use of it. It seems probable that in more primitive cases the protection role was collectively discharged rather than handled on a specialized basis. Moreover, it is not clear whether the mafioso was always in the same profession as his proteges.

XREF: Connects to scholarship on the historical origins of organized crime and the mafia's relationship to legitimate economic structures.

Oddly enough, however, it makes too much sense. If these conditions are all that is needed for the mafia to originate, why then is the mafia not present wherever there is a thriving economy? If urban-coastal markets so fostered the growth of the Sicilian mafia, why did it not flourish in other urban areas of southern Italy? Why, for instance, does the tradition not exist in towns such as Messina and Siracusa—or for that matter towns throughout southern Europe—which are not ostensibly more impoverished? Conversely, if the profits provided by a bustling economy are an essential prerequisite, how could the mafia have emerged in the poorer towns of the interior such as Caltanisetta and Agrigento

QUESTION: What additional factors distinguish the mafia's birthplace from otherwise similar coastal and interior towns? The argument points to a missing explanatory variable.

The only markets in which the mafia developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, however, were those which were contiguous to rural western Sicily. This contiguity must therefore be significant. As a result of specific conditions, these areas may have served as a crucible for the development of reputation and viable networks. In short, the skills characteristic of the mafioso must indeed have received a vital stimulus from the interior, as Franchetti's theory implies.

Builds on: "Mafia thrives in prosperous regions, not impoverished ones"

When seeking to identify markets which attract mafiosi or foster their autonomy, if we are to remain consistent with our theory we must look first of all at those markets in which the demand for protection is especially pronounced. In doing so we are not necessarily looking for a high level of demand for other commodities. Although active markets sometimes go hand in hand with better opportunities for dealers in protection, there is no theoretical reason why this should always be the case.

Builds on: "Mafia thrives in prosperous regions, not impoverished ones"

Between 1812 and 1860, according to Mack Smith's History of Sicily, the number of large landowners in Sicily rocketed from 2,000 to 20,000; and between 1860 and 1900 the number of hectares in private hands increased from 250,000 to 650,000 (Sereni 1971: 276-277). The change was dramatic, and it meant that as land became more available, protection grew more scarce.

Contrary to accepted opinion, however, there is no evidence that policing the peasants provided the first significant opportunity for the autonomization of the protection industry. Peasants were numerous and expendable, weak and disorganized; their rebellions were fragmented and desperate; for many years they had no plans, leaders, or unions. The organization of tabor relations in the southern latifundia actually deprived the peasantry of virtually all bargaining power.

QUESTION: What then provided the first significant opportunity for the autonomy/autonomization of the protection industry, if not peasant policing?

The conventional Marxist view which holds that the rural mafia was a staunch ally of the landlords and worked for their exclusive benefit is not consistently supported by the evidence. In several recorded cases, in both Sicily and Calabria, mafiosi acted more as brokers taking peasant interests into serious account. Within the theoretical framework of this book, the ambiguity is not difficult to explain. When the choice was between a rich landowner or gabelloto on the one hand and a wretched peasant on the other, a mafioso had little doubt about which side to take. When peasants joined forces as a collective, however, acting on their behalf could, under certain conditions, pay handsomely. The link between mafiosi and landlords was not ideological but circumstantial.

XREF: Challenges the conventional Marxist historiography of the mafia; connects to any broader reading on mafia-state relations and clientelism.

Mafiosi, at least for a while, had serious problems with the Fascists. Ideologically aggressive, the Fascist regime naturally wanted to monopolize protection and offered a better deal than the mafiosi to the protected elites, who promptly abandoned their previous suppliers. But the mafia has also had problems, if of a different nature, with left-wing trade unionists, who could prove to be an unbeatable competitor; for if work and land are perceived as rights, fairness in labor relations is enforced, and protection is offered for free, the mafia is out of business.

Pays off: "Mafia emerges where demand for protection is strongest."

In conclusion, the mafia did not originally evolve by exploiting the protection requirements of the labor movement. It seems unlikely that the early days of the rural class conflict provided much opportunity for he protection industry to develop autonomy. At best, this opportunity came later, certainly after the 1890s and possibly after 1945, when the conflict became more acute and acquired radical overtones.

This limited route to autonomy is very different from that which depends on a number and variety of customers. In the former case the protector can rise swiftly owing to his increased blackmailing power. But in doing so he meets with a constraint: he can rise only as far as the position originally occupied by his employer. Provided the landowner cannot count on other protectors (such as the state), the mafioso can eventually usurp his place. But he then becomes less a mafioso than a self-made landowner or gabelloto. Only if the power and reputation he acquires in the process serve a wider purpose can his position evolve into that of a mafioso.

DEFINE: Distinguishes limited-route autonomy from customer-dependent autonomy and clarifies when protection leadership becomes genuine mafioso status.

It had become demonstrably clear to most villagers that if they valued public security, it would have to come about through their own efforts.... This situation provided the incentive for Mariano Ardena to organize, among members of the Catholic circle he headed, a group of two armed individuals to escort, at a price, villagers taking wheat to the mill.... This venture soon became a successful going concern. By 1900 it was expanded into a barter system. Villagers no longer needed to go to the distant mill. For a modest fee, they could exchange wheat for flour without leaving the Camporano area.

XREF: Connects to themes of private security and state failure that recur in Sicily's mafia history.

During this time, some notable changes in the relative standing of Ardena and his group among villagers took place. The provision of security and the way the barter system was conducted gained them respect and esteem. The incarceration they suffered in 1898 and 1903 served tu enhance the legitimacy and reasonableness of their action. Now villagers began to go to Ardena with other problems.... These modest beginnings were transformed into a successful long-term enterprise. (Sabetti 1984: 104)

The journey from the estates of the interior to the city markets was rife with dangers, which caused the demand for protection to escalate. Ill-defined or extralegal allocative questions arose and demanded resolution: Who gets to lease the land? Who gets to buy it at auction? Who has access to water? Who has the right of way? Who gets the right of pasturage? Who gets credit? Who gets the threshing contract? Who represents producers at the city market? Who runs the transportation? Questions such as these, bound to arise in a society en route to modernization, were not left to the logic of market forces; the parties involved adopted as a regulative device an economic structure similar to that adopted by the millers: the oligopoly.

XREF: Parallels the millers' oligopoly structure mentioned earlier; both demonstrate how non-market regulatory devices fill governance gaps during modernization.

Ardena and others like him—men who made a business of transporting wheat, flour, oil, oranges, cheese, and other produce to mills, city markets, and ports—found themselves at the point where urban commercial prosperity and rural toughness acquired in the school of hard knocks of western Sicily met and could be profitably exploited. Had either of these ingredients been missing, we would not be discussing the mafia today. The countryside provided the opportunities to get started, and the city offered advantageous applications—not after the Second World War, as many scholars maintain, but right from the beginning.

XREF: Challenges the conventional scholarly timeline that places mafia emergence after WWII, instead locating its origins at the very start of the urban-rural commercial economy.

According to Orazio Candia (1984), mafialike practices can be detected in Sicily as early as the end of the sixteenth century. He cites a fascinating case suggesting that the exercise of private "justice" has a very long history indeed. These historical traces help explain how protection acquired the specialized features, skills, and traditions that distinguish it from other activities and have enabled it to become a pervasive force in economic life. But it is unlikely that the industry attained the autonomy which makes it identifiable as an enterprise sui generis before the nineteenth century (see Spampinato 1987).

XREF: Contextualizes mafia origins, relevant to understanding how protection services develop specialized traditions over centuries.

Franchetti's study is crucial to chronology in two respects. First, it pinpoints the beginning of the nineteenth century as the moment of the mafia's first appearance. Before then feudalism was still dominant: "The landlords' bravi... did not abstain from extortion to their own advantage; nor was there any shortage of crooks who put their industry into practice on their own account; and mutual violence among the gentry took place in an absence of rules. Yet, in spite of these occasional disturbances, the use of force remained for the most part limited and subject to certain regulations" ( 1974: 89). It requires a process of democratization, as Franchetti says, for the conditions which might generate a true mafia to arise, and this process—lasting over a hundred years—did not begin until the end of the eighteenth century.

XREF: Connects to broader theory of state formation and how democratization or weak states create space for organized crime.

Second, Franchetti's study itself can be taken as evidence. The very existence of his theory implies that the elements required to construct it were already present when he visited Sicily in 1875. The earliest date, therefore, at which the mafia might be said to have come into being is 1812, the year when feudalism began to be dismantled in Sicily, and the latest 1875, the year of Franchetti's journey. In 1838, however, in a famous report, Pietro Calà Ulloa, procurator general at Trapani, was the first to give evidence of a Homo mafioso in the making in several towns of western Sicily (Pezzino 1987: 909-910).

In all likelihood, by the time Italy was unified in 1860-61 the foundations of this peculiar industry were already firmly in place. Not only did the state have to fight to establish itself and its law as the legitimate authority and a credible guarantor in a region where no such authority had previously existed. It also had to compete with a rival, an entrenched, if nebulous, entity which had by then shaped the economic transactions as well as the skills, expectations, and norms of the native people. This is why arguments which blame the supposed weakness of the Italian state for the emergence of the mafia are unconvincing. The early Italian liberal state may have been confused, at odds with an eccentric reality, badly organized, and too busy elsewhere to devote much of its energy to the South (Riall 1989); but it was neither significantly weaker nor demonstrably more repressive than any other liberal state of the period. More likely the natives had developed their own special roughness.

XREF: Challenges the common narrative that the Italian state's weakness caused mafia emergence; reframes it as pre-state indigenous development. Builds on: "Protection rackets existed in Sicily by the 1600s."

But increasingly obsessive attempts to come up with a clear-cut answer—is the mafia organized or is it not?—have divided scholars radically and distracted them from a more fruitful analysis.

At the opposite extreme this portrait is rejected in equally holistic fashion. The mafia is perceived as the conspiratorial fabrication of prosecutors and police in search of culprits, journalistic hacks in search of scoops, or politicians in search of ammunition to level at their opponents—a view that is in itself rather conspiratorial. Among the supporters of this view are certain British historians (see Finley et al. 1986: 182-183; Duggan 1989: 1-12). Since the nineteenth century, however, there have also been moderates arguing for less extravagant interpretations. Pasquale Villari writes in Lettere meridionali (1878): "This mafia has no precise statures; it is not a secret society; one could almost say that it is not even an association"

Hess argues that Mini, and many others like him, are essentially truthful: "Mini knew individuals whom he called 'mafiosi' not because they were members of a secret society but because they acted in a certain way, a mafioso way" (p. ix). Drawing mainly on late nineteenth century judicial evidence, Hess sees the mafia as a cluster of "small clique-like associations which are independent of each other but maintain relations with one another, which support each other, make arrangements with each other, at times take joint action, but on occasions can be at daggers drawn" (p. 11). These small groups, called cosche, or families, do not, according to Hess, have an awareness of themselves as a collectivity, as "we."

Conversely, those who believe the opposite seem to deny the elementary fact that mafiosi can chink, plan, and organize as well (or as badly) as other human beings and are no more or less incompetent than automobile makers, Freemasons, or priests. If these groups can organize themselves to achieve their goals, why not mafiosi?

XREF: Challenges romantic or pathological views of criminal organizations, comparable to rational-choice analyses of organized crime and gang behavior in sociology and economics.

There is only one case of a witness's defying the code. In October 1986 Claudio Domino, the eleven-year-old son of a small-time entrepreneur responsible for cleaning the courtroom in which the maxi-trial was being held, was gunned down in Palermo. The mafia was instantly suspected of this atrocity. Two days later Giovanni Bontade—brother of the murdered boss Stefano Bontade and co-defendant along with 474 others—stood up behind the bars of one of the cages in the courtroom to make a remarkable declaration: "Signor Presidente, we want to be cleared of every suspicion.... We reject the hypothesis that such a barbaric act could be even faintly connected with us. We are men. We have children.... We want to express our sympathy to Claudio's family" (Repubblica, October 10, 1986; emphasis added). The other defendants nodded and even shouted their agreement.

XREF: Connects to the author's broader examination of the mafia's code of silence and its occasional ruptures under moral pressure.

In late 1989 Francesco Marino Mannoia, turning state's evidence, claimed that one of the reasons for Giovanni Bontade's murder was that statement in which, breaching his oath to the mafia, he had revealed its existence (Repubblica, December 7, 1989). It was the first time the term we had publicly been used by a mafioso in that sense. In the past some kind of conscious collective identity had been assumed, But now, for the first time, it was acknowledged and defended. Nobody had been formally charged. Only the newspaper headlines proclaimed: "The mafia murders a child to get at his parents" (La Stampa, October 9, 1986). but the men on trial recognized themselves in that accusation and denied it. They were in jail, and hence technically innocent of Claudio's murder; but they knew that everybody knew that "we" could reach beyond those bars, and for once dropped their guard.

XREF: Connects to the history of Italian mafia culture and the code of silence (omertà).

If certain readers remain skeptical of the significance of Bontade's outburst, there is further evidence of something more sophisticated than a pattern of occasional relationships and contingent coalitions. In Sicily, according to a 1987 Carabinieri report (CPM-RCC) there are 105 protection firms or families, mostly in the western part of the island, eighteen in Palermo alone, a number that has not changed substantially over the last one hundred years (see Table 1). The number of mafia firms or units seems high and the territorial jurisdiction of each small by comparison with New York, where there have been only five families in the last fifty years. The possibility that the mafia in Sicily would ever become a single centralized protection monopoly covering the entire region (let alone other parts of the world) is negated by this simple evidence alone. The figures, however, tell us nothing about the relationships between these firms, except that they suggest indirectly :hat organizing a cartel or oligopoly from so many units would be a task of considerable complexity (though that is not to say it would be impossible).

XREF: Contrasts with the five-family structure of New York's mafia, suggesting a comparison of mafia organizational structures across regions.

The age difference might be accounted for by cultural differences; that is, Sicilians may be more loyal to their elders and more susceptible to discipline. They would therefore be less tempted to advance their careers at an early age. A better explanation (entirely compatible with cultural differences) assumes simply that in Sicily (and in the United States) the bosses are older because protection firms are more organized, and the top positions are therefore attained through an orderly process which discourages young people from challenging the establishment.

Sicilians wishing to embark on a career in protection must first be recruited; only then do they begin to climb the hierarchy, in competition with their peers rather than their elders. The predominant career path is by way of the internal labor market, not direct market competition. Thus, the inevitable tensions surrounding succession are not as severe in Sicily as in Naples or Calabria, and in many instances succession is prepared for over a long period of time by agreement among the established hierarchy. The reputation necessary to occupy the key positions is also gained not on the open market but internally, by demonstrating loyalty and determination, and ultimately by being co-opted from the top.

XREF: Contrasts with labor market theories on careers and advancement; also resonates with internal labor market research in economics and organizational sociology.

The fate of Giuseppe Di Stefano is a powerful illustration of the fact that established protection firms in Sicily cannot easily be displaced by outside groups even during a war. Judge Giovanni Falcone wrote that bloodshed in the streets of Sicilian towns is often a sign of conflict between a mafia family and a group which does not belong to the cartel (Falcone and Padovani 1991: 37-38). Firms may fight one another, but they do so as coalitions rather than individuals. Coalitions have a number of advantages in this market. In peacetime they allow firms to become securely settled, extending the loyal networks of both customers and employees, and ultimately making them capable of survival and regeneration even when a war is lost.

XREF: Connects to theories of incumbent advantage and market entry barriers in organized crime economics.

In conclusion, the age difference between Sicilian bosses and those in the rest of the South suggests that, in relative terms, firms in Sicily are more established, better organized internally, and, up to a point, better coordinated among themselves. It also suggests that the Sicilian situation is not unique; in other words, the relatively high degree of organization and coordination is not an inevitable condition of equilibrium toward which every protection universe automatically tends. Some simply remain in a permanent state of warfare, a fate that others strive, with uncertain results, to avoid.

There is evidence suggesting the presence of "natural" alliances and groupings among mafia firms. Smaller families, for instance, cluster around larger ones: Stefano Bontade, for example, "controlled the whole of Palermo between the train station and the district of Ciaculli, even though in this area there were individual families with their own smaller territories; all of them depended on Stefano Bontade, and would gather on his estate to make every decision" (SC: IV, 62). This kind of clustering is best seen as a form of licensing, whereby a large protection family hands out portions of its territory or particular markets to its smaller colleagues.

DEFINE: Introduces 'licensing' as a framework for understanding hierarchical mafia groupings.

These alliances are particularly apparent in wartime as the coalitions cut across the urban-rural divide. The city offers more opportunities for the protection business since the number and range of transactions taking place there is greater. The country, meanwhile, supplies labor and is more easily policed by protection firms, and so offers greater opportunity for hiding out, conducting meetings, and providing alibis. Michele Greco, head of the Palermo cartel in the 1970s and early 1980s, hid for a long time in a farmhouse near Caccamo protected by the local family. To be equally secure, city families are obliged to take costly measures. Tommaso Buscetta provides what is probably an extreme example: "Pino Greco, known as 'Scarpuzzedda,' felt he had to clean up his territory... and forced all [natural] families which failed to provide sufficient guarantees of absolute loyalty to leave" (TB: III, 16). Judge Falcone reached this conclusion: "In some respects the Sicilian interior matters more than the center of Palermo. In the geography of families Palermo counts for a lot, but only up to a point. Palermo endorses decisions made by the interior and by the areas surrounding the city. I am not thinking just about the Corleone mafia. I am thinking also of the provinces of Calta nissetta and Trapani, areas where the mafia has a widespread control over the territory" (Repubblica March 1, 1991).

XREF: Connects to broader network/organized-crime geography literature on hybrid territorial governance.

The story begins toward the end of the 1950s. Before this time mafia families were not connected by a collective structure. As Judge Cesare Terranova put it, they "were a mosaic of small republics with topographical borders marked by tradition" (CPM: 4-xvii, 656), or, as an economist might say, a territorial oligopoly more akin to a constellation of independent firms than a federation of units bound by explicit rules. The equilibrium held, when it did, because of "natural" mechanisms, dependent on both protection and the dynamics of the protected markets, and also because of casual bargaining between pairs or among clusters of firms. Perhaps this universe was not as lacking in collective consciousness as Hess (1973) maintains, though not by much. Since the end of the 1950s, however, a series of attempts has been made to establish a more systematic organization among firms—not as a single cartel embracing all Sicilian families, as so many observers simplistically believe, but a number of cartels, at least one per province. The first to attempt this coordination was the province of Palermo, which had the highest concentration of families (approximately forty-six; see Table 2).

XREF: Relates to economic concepts of territorial oligopoly and cartels applied to organized crime — connects to industrial organization literature.

But first something must be said about the structure of individual firms. It is uncertain how much the internal organization of any one firm had in common with any other before the attempt at coordination began—whether, in other words, this coordination had any standardizing effect on individual structure. The initiation ritual, for instance, seems to have been a common trademark since the nineteenth century (see Chapter 6). Whatever the case, according to sources from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, each family has a typical hierarchical makeup (VM: 3-6, 77-78; VM-GdS, May 16, 1987; TC-GdS, April 12, 1986; TB: I, 4, 21; see also MA-L'Ora and LV). Ordinary members—men of honor as well as soldiers or operai—are admitted to individual firms, called famiglie. The head of the family, or capo famiglia, also known as the rappresentante, is normally elected by the men of honor in his family; he then appoints a vice-capo and a consigliere (a maximum of three, according to Buscetta), although some families either do not have these positions or attach no importance to them. Elections in this context express the approval on which reputation rests. Voters do not so much choose as legitimize a choice: if all agree to make A the boss, that agreement and the knowledge that it is unanimous become the backbone of A's reputation. Voting also serves to commit the voter publicly.

Members are organized under the supervision of capidecina, who oversee their "military" operations and mediate their relationship with the boss of the family. The term capidecina derives from dieci, "ten," suggesting that each would be in charge of ten men. This is a purely symbolic division, however; some families are too small to have ten members, while others, such as the Bontade family, permit a more democratic relationship with the boss (TC: 23). According to the testimony of Antonino Calderone: "It is not possible to have a direct relationship between the man of honor and the rappresentante unmediated by the intervention of the capodecina. In some areas such as Palermo, however, there are families in which the men of honor report directly to the rappresentante; they are his most absolutely trustworthy men and are usually given the most sensitive and secret tasks" (AC: III, 738; also Arlacchi 1992: 160).

DEFINE: Clarifies the term capidecina, deriving from dieci ('ten'), while noting the division is purely symbolic.

In order to prevent a potential imbalance of power, some other prominent member was appointed instead (TB: I, 102; III, 23; AC: I, 6, 122). Finally, at the head of the commissione would be a rappresentante regionale or segretario, essentially the first among equals (a description used by Calderone himself; AC: I, 8). He was a weak leader, especially in the earliest incarnation of the cartel, his task simply that of organizing meetings (TB-GdS, April 4, 1986).

XREF: Connects to literature on organized crime leadership structures and how criminal organizations deliberately engineer weak central authority to preserve member autonomy.

Its members—called capi mandamento—each represented three geographically contiguous families. For the approximately forty-six families in Palermo province, therefore, we can assume that there were about fifteen capi mandamento, which was in fact the figure given by a confidential source to Judge Terranova twenty years earlier, in 1965.

The jurisdiction of the commissione extends over a province; each province of Sicily has a commissione with the exception of Messina and Siracusa. Beyond the provincial level details become vague. For quite some time there was no coordination among the provincial cartels. Tommaso Buscetta claims, however, that a commissione interprovinciale was tentatively set up toward the end of the 1970s, composed of all rappresentanti di provincia, and that although Palermo was by far the dominant force, each province had the same formal standing: "This mechanism made it possible to create alliances, or in any case to reach agreements on business of common interest" (TB: I, 21; see also III, 13; AC: I, 39-41). He said little as to whether this supercartel ever worked, and to what particular end, except to remark that "if the entrepreneur of a province wanted to do some work in another province, permission depended on the decision of the interprovinciale" (TB: III, 12-13). Several other sources confirm that whenever an entrepreneur had business in another family's territory, he had to seek permission through his own family if he was a member of one, or from the boss acting as his protector if he was not (OSAG Arnone: 145-146, 155-156, 170-171, 180-181; I-3, I-4).

The first goal of the commissione was to regulate the use of violence. Many stories tell of the obstacles encountered by mafiosi in obtaining permission to commit a murder (SC: IV, 45, 68; VS: 132; TC: 20-21 ; TB: I, 14, 84, 100, 106; VM: 27). Permission had to be granted by the boss of the territory in which the murder was to take place, and the commissione was supposed to enforce this rule. If permission was not requested, the murder was interpreted as an act of war, or at least of defiance.

XREF: Connects to broader organizational/dispute-resolution systems where centralized authority regulates localized violence.

The arbitration role of the commissione has proved far from infallible, and families, especially the larger ones, have retained their independence. I shall not go into the details of the two internecine wars (1961-1963 and 1981-1985), themselves the subject of another study. Suffice it to say that the ability of the commissione to enforce its own rules relied on a coalition of the powerful families to which the capi mandamento belonged. Hence, it was bound to be subject to internal tension. A rule requiring members to attend the meetings unarmed was itself a sign that there was a risk of violence (TB: 1, 90), and an indication of the commissione's power, as Buscetta pointed out, to impose the will of its members on other families (TB: I, 5).

Residence is repeatedly cited as the criterion for affiliation: "If [someone] lives there," meaning Italy, Violi explains, "he can't be one of us." To this Cuffaro says: "Yes, compare Paolo. But let's assume that I come from Italy with a letter and you know that I am a friend. I chink you have the right to respect me as a friend and I to do my duty toward you, right? There is no doubt, if Italy acknowledges [someone] and sends him here, hasn't he the same rights and duties?" Violi responds: "No ... it's different. If he lives here with us and we acknowledge him here, when the moment [of initiation] comes, everything will be all right."

DEFINE: The exchange clarifies that residency within the community—not origin or letters of introduction—is the operative criterion for mafia membership and initiation.

When I was in Palermo [until 1963] I learned from the talk which went on about the Cosa Nostra in North America that this organization, similar in structure to its Sicilian counterpart, had in the past been connected with it, but that relations had ceased... I also know that it used to be possible for a man of honor who migrated to the United Scares to become immediately, by virtue of his position, a member of the American Cosa Nostra. In the United States now, by contrast, I can see that a man of honor such as myself has no chance to engage in official relations with the American Cosa Nostra.

XREF: Connects to the broader history of Italian-American organized crime and the breakdown of transatlantic mafia relations.

Relationships and contacts with law-enforcement agents are prohibited not so much in the interests of security as to protect reputation: "It is a fundamental rule for every man of honor never to report a theft or crime to the police" (TC: 121). How, indeed, would it be possible to make a living protecting others from crime if one were known to have fallen victim to it oneself?

DEFINE: Clarifies how honor codes operate: the taboo against police contact stems from reputational concerns, not security — a key concept about the social logic of honor-based communities.

A mafioso must not become involved with the wives of his colleagues, and in general must be seen to lead an irreproachable family life. If these rules have any purpose other than to uphold conventional values, it must be to safeguard reputation; that is, a protector must protect his wife's virtue first lest he end up a cornuto. A less obvious aim might be to prevent the pleasures of illicit sex from becoming a vehicle for the release not only of passion but, unwittingly, of confidential information as well (a weakness to which secret agents seem particularly prone).

Whenever norms are handed down by institutions, they are likely to concern areas of human behavior which cannot otherwise be effectively governed. They flourish on the sore spots for which no better medicine has been devised. Perhaps the sorest of them all—not only in the mafia—is information. At the top of the list is the rule of secrecy. The code of silence must be observed at all times, and a man of honor is never to reveal to anyone his mafia membership or confirm the existence or activities of the organization.

XREF: Connects to institutional theory and the sociology of informal governance — Elinor Ostrom's commons norms and informal institutional enforcement.

Unfortunately there is no sure remedy against lies. It is nor surprising, therefore, to learn that when mafiosi address one another, according to all the informants who have turned state's evidence, the rule is always to speak the truth. The mafioso can choose to remain silent; but if he elects to speak, he must not lie. Lying is supposedly punishable by expulsion and even death, although there is no record of such punishment's being carried out. The rule of truth is said to be even more important than the notorious rule of silence (VM: 77; TB: I, 126-127 and III, 110; TC: 21).

DEFINE: Clarifies that the Mafia's code of conduct centers on truth-telling among members, not just the better-known rule of omertà (silence).

There are other norms governing the circulation of information among insiders. Even after the emergence of a coordinated carrel structure, members continued to be admitted to a particular family rather than to the mafia as such, and families retained their independence in many ways. The flow of information was restricted not only between families but also within them, that is, between bosses and members.

Even botanical specimens can symbolize the mafia. Natale Gaggioli, a resourceful Sicilian photographer, once revealed that he always used to keep within reach one of those thick prickly pear leaves typical of the barren and menacing Sicilian countryside, and whenever he took a picture of a mafia victim he would place it by the corpse. Without the prickly pear the murder did not look like a mafia murder and, he claimed, nobody on the Continent would buy the picture (Lodato 1990: 8-9). Television sound tracks, too, have replaced the obsessive and limited Jew's harp—conventionally the musical correlative of the mafia—with an elaborate electronic clone vaguely reminiscent of the spaghetti western. Without such persuasive accompaniment the news would not sound real.

XREF: Connects to how media authenticity is manufactured through recognizable shorthand, similar to depictions of organized crime in film and news. SEED: A piece on how visual and audio clichés manufacture perceived authenticity in crime reporting could make a compelling essay.

If credulity on the one hand and disregard on the other are of little help in understanding the mafia, prejudiced disbelief misses the point altogether, which is neither to establish whether symbols and terminology are believable to us (that is, whether they seem plausible to the scholar whose principal activity is not that of selling protection in a rough world) nor to pursue a chimerical distinction between those symbols which are genuine and those which are concocted by overimaginative outsiders. Inferring uni vocally from the "confusion between myth and reality" that reality is far less mythical than is often assumed (see Duggan 1989: 188) is simply not acceptable. In what follows I try to demonstrate that, in some special sense, the opposite obtains, namely, that myth lends force to a reality which would not otherwise be able to manifest itself.

QUESTION: Provocative claim worth pursuing: how exactly does myth 'lend force' to institutional reality? What mechanism makes rhetoric substantive rather than merely decorative?

Symbolism has other applications, coo. A woman acquiring some land in Vicari was "encouraged" to pay for protection: "How can you enter the Casa Santa without asking permission?" she was asked rhetorically (VM-GdS, May 29, 1987). Casa Santa, the sacred house, stands here as a metaphor for mafia territory. The origin of the term is not clear: it echoes not so much the language of official religion as that of fraternal organizations and sects. But it matters little where it comes from so long as the audience finds it convincing. In another instance I was told of a man suspected of excessive curiosity who was threatened over the phone by means of a riddle of pseudoreligious inspiration. The anonymous caller proceeded point-blank to the incongruous question: "Do you happen to know where the Church of La Madonna del Riposo is located?" A polite denial was followed by a frantic search revealing that the church in question was "located" in the city cemetery—the "repose" alluded to being of the eternal variety. … Symbolic objects can serve as threats. A metal heart of the kind donated to Catholic churches to give thanks for grace received, known as an ex-voto, was employed at least twice in the 1980s: in both cases the heart was perforated by bullet holes. One was placed at the back door of Salvatore Catania, who lived to tell of the threat. Pasquale Gramaglia was less fortunate; he was executed a few days after receiving the message (OSAG: 128). Raimondo Lampo, clearly someone on whom subtlety would be lose, found an empty coffin deposited at his lodgings (OSAG: 42). Gioacchino Basile, a trade unionist active in the Palermo shipbuilding industry, found a dead bird in his locked car after he had tried to organize an antimafia conference (Manifesto, July 4, 1990). Other menacing deliveries have included the severed heads of domestic animals and tarot cards featuring sword characters. Issuing threats by means of symbolic objects may seem peculiarly old-fashioned, but it has some advantages. In a generally hostile environment obscure signals are perhaps better able to instill terror while requiring minimum exposure: no voice, no writing, no risk of being overheard, no traces.

XREF: Connects to broader study of organized crime's use of religious language and ritual as coercive communication beyond literal violence.

Symbolic objects can serve as threats. … Issuing threats by means of symbolic objects may seem peculiarly old-fashioned, but it has some advantages. In a generally hostile environment obscure signals are perhaps better able to instill terror while requiring minimum exposure: no voice, no writing, no risk of being overheard, no traces.

XREF: Connects to signaling theory and the economics of threats — anonymous coercion outperforms explicit communication in hostile settings.

It is possible, however, that rather than serving any practical purpose, secrecy itself is relevant in part as a matter of style. The mere suggestion of a threat creates a menacing atmosphere, which increases both the need for protection and the effectiveness of intimidation. If one does not know where and when the blow will fall, anxiety and distrust grow more intense and fear becomes generalized. A heightened—almost paranoid—sensitivity to signals transforms the raising of an eyebrow into the most compelling of threats.

Still, their function is presumably to transmit a shared symbolic language, an esprit de corps, a sense of belonging and differentiation akin, mutatis mutandis, to that transmitted by, say, IBM to its recruits.

XREF: Parallels corporate onboarding and culture-building practices, echoing how organizations transmit esprit de corps to recruits.

The fact that an image or style is founded on fictional references or that mythical characters are mixed in with real ones is immaterial. Appropriating (and manipulating) a worthy tradition of some sort is a common practice which all institutions undertake to raise their status in the eyes of their members and strengthen internal cohesion.

In other instances the production of symbols has a merely generic connection with the user: notoriously, advertising urges consumers to live up to the standards of categories to which it seems desirable to belong.

But there are also cases in which the source of inspiration and the ultimate consumer are identical and reinforce each other. Certain fictional symbols are inspired by real characters who nonetheless do not embody them in reality. These symbols then become attractive to the individuals who inspired them, who subsequently model their own real image on the fiction they engendered. Mafiosi never viewed the prickly pear as anything other than a prickly pear. But now that that ingenious photographer has used it as a symbol of their murders, what would you think if you found this arboreal specimen in your mail box while on business in Palermo?

In the late 1970s a prominent aristocratic Sicilian family lent a country villa to a mafia boss for his daughter's wedding reception. About five hundred people took part in the festivities. Apparently the music—deemed to have just the right touch of sentimentality—was one of the highlights of the occasion: it was the sound track from The Godfather.

XREF: Connects to the broader history of The Godfather films and their reception in Sicily, where the real mafia found the depiction both amusing and flattering.

But in at least two senses the word can be said to have created the phenomenon: first, and most obviously, it supplied outsiders with a label to identify an ill-defined conglomerate, thereby making it possible to speak and think of it as a whole (and also, of course, making it possible to think of it wrongly as a mythical whole). More important, the word created a brand name, thereby making it possible to ally oneself to an entity with a threatening and resonant reputation.

QUESTION: What phenomenon is being discussed here? The label's power to unify an ill-defined conglomerate and act as a brand suggests this could relate to a social movement or intellectual school.

The fact that the word was invented by outsiders does not imply that those who identified with it could nor adopt it as their own. Identities are invariably reinforced by reference to outsiders, and no social or psychological law decrees that insiders should necessarily provide the linguistic tool kit with which a self-conscious identity can be constructed.

XREF: Connects to discussions of reclaimed slurs and self-designation in social identity theory; also relevant to postcolonial studies of naming.

In advertising an illegal business, one must rely on accidental and externally generated symbols, a recourse that inevitably causes confusion and instability among the symbols themselves, for there are no laws to protect property rights over the names and trademarks which are created in this way. The "true" trademark is the one that outsiders use, and even if one wants to distinguish oneself from the rest and adopt a new name, the relationship must still be maintained. The real name is that which best conveys reputation and achieves intimidation.

XREF: Connects to discussions around trademark law, informal/black market economies, and how reputation functions absent legal enforcement.

There is, however, a bolder argument to explain its failure as a name. Reputation is vulnerable if its symbolic markers are easy to pirate: names and symbols may lose their credibility and even perish under the weight of too many competing attributions. During the 1960s in France a gang of vicious criminals began robbing banks while wearing comical masks consisting of a big nose, a mustache, and eyeglass frames. They became known as "the mustache gang." Soon, throughout France, robbers of all sorts, including some incompetent ones, took to wearing masks; "mustache gangs" proliferated, and the disguise eventually lost its potency.

Yet the names mafia and Cosa Nostra, owing to their peculiar combination of precision and vagueness, are relatively difficult to pirate. They denote a specific ethnic type which is not easy to counterfeit: if a tall blond with freckles and a Norwegian accent announces that he is a mafioso, we are not likely to be impressed. In Italy the same announcement made in a Piedmontese accent would not strike fear. In Sicily itself, where everybody has the "right" combination of ethnic features, mafiosi when making threatening phone calls accentuate their Palermo accent (Falcone and Padovani 1991: 56).

XREF: Connects to the broader discussion about piracy and identity in the source, and to the sociology of authenticity and performance.

Of course, with ordinary commodities in which it is easy to tell good from bad, a good name cannot survive consumer dissatisfaction with the product. But what the mafia or political parries sell are nor ordinary commodities. We have already seen that reputation is the asset the mafia values most. Its benefits are enormous since once a reputation exists in the protection trade, it is scarcely necessary to produce the real thing. Reputation, so long as nobody challenges it, is the real thing.

DEFINE: This explains how reputation functions as the actual asset in non-commodity markets, where the product can't be easily verified.

There is a limitation, however: an illegal business cannot freely commission advertisements and must rely on informal assistance or the visual or aural images others—in the legal world—create when talking, writing, filming, or playing music about it. In addition, the purposes of fiction and crime sometimes coincide, in that both can thrive on mystery, awe, and terror. No wonder they pirate each other's creations.

In many cases reality not only does not but cannot precede an articulate representation; that exercise, therefore, shapes a reality where before there was just inert matter. In the absence of clear-cut evidence, when truth that matters to us is the only one available, it points to a truth. One might question whether Don Peppe is a real mafioso or simply a preposterous braggart. Who, however, would be willing to call his bluff? Presumably only another, even more "real" mafioso.

XREF: Echoes the social-constructionist and performativity traditions (e.g., speech act theory, Butler's performativity) where naming or representing brings realities into being.

These rules are not to touch the women of other men of honor; nor to steal from other men of honor or, in general, from anyone; not to exploit prostitution; not to kill other men of honor unless strictly necessary; to avoid passing information to the police; not to quarrel with other men of honor; to maintain proper behavior; to keep silent about the Cosa Nostra around outsiders; to avoid under all circumstances introducing oneself to other men of honor (the introduction requires the presence of a third man of honor who knows both parties and who confirms membership in the Cosa Nostra by saying, "This is our friend" or "This is the same thing").

Finally, the fundamental symbolic gestures remain elementary and unembellished. Were the descriptions merely concocted to fool an audience, they would be more elaborate and unnaturally precise, for exaggeration and the wish to impress are inseparable. The fact that mafiosi are generally well-versed in the art of impressing others makes the simplicity and directness of their ritual all the more striking. It possesses a concentration of evocative power typical of ritual in oral cultures. Everything converges on the blood spilled on the card, which is then set on fire: the two original symbols become indistinguishable, la stessa cosa. The details may be forgettable; the essence clearly is not.

QUESTION: Is simplicity genuinely a reliable marker of authenticity in ritual, or is simplicity itself a crafted aesthetic? This warrants further thought.

A revealing incident hints at the problem of mnemonic retention of complex ceremonies in the case of decentralized and illegal groups: "When the police raided a Triad initiation ceremony recently they discovered that celebrants were conducting the ritual by reference to a description in the police manual: (Observer, March 5, 1989). This amusing story may have a purely practical explanation: the participants had simply forgotten the ritual, and police records represented the best available source.

XREF: Relates to mnemonic retention and how marginalization from literacy affects cultural memory — parallels oral tradition scholarship and literacy studies. QUESTION: How do other decentralized groups preserve ritual knowledge across generations? What mechanisms substitute for written records when group knowledge is lost?

In Recupero (1987: 313) we discover that the mafia ritual has the distinct flavor of a simplified version of the rituals of the Carboneria—a nineteenth-century political fraternity which fought for Italy's independence—and, more remotely, of the Freemasons. The initiation ritual of the Carboneria involves knives, blindfolds, blood, fire, and the invocation of a saint—Saint Theobald, protector of the sect. The climax is also familiar: "I consent, and wish, if I perjure myself, that my body may be cut in pieces, then burnt, and my ashes scattered to the wind" (MacKenzie 1967: 324-327).

Second, geographic proximity does not necessarily foster osmosis. Proximity may even increase the need to maintain sharply distinct rituals in order to avoid misunderstandings: there is no danger of confusing a Chinese "family" with a Sicilian one, whereas it is possible to rake one southern Italian group for another. The Calabrese, according to Calderone, "were not at all trying to enter the Cosa Nostra. They had their own organization, which was almost identical to ours, and they were even pretending to be more important than us" (Arlacchi 1992: 139).

All signs indicate that the mafia ritual is practiced for purely internal reasons. For over one hundred years the ceremony has undergone almost no modification at all. If it existed merely to impress others, modifications would be expected in response to changes in fashion and taste. So what internal function does the ritual serve? One hypothesis is that it may set the seal on a contract which cannot be ratified in the conventional way: shaking hands is a weak gesture which does not capture the imagination of recruits and cannot be expected to deter opportunistic behavior in an illegal world; scribbling one's name at the bottom of a written document, itself a ritual act binding parties in ordinary transactions, has the additional disadvantage of leaving evidence behind. Hence this most prosaic protection deal is transmuted into a permanent bond by means of a concentrated symbolic act.

XREF: Relates to symbolic interaction and ritual theory, plus how institutions create binding commitments through non-legal means.

The ritual may also be preserved for a second, more subtle reason entirely compatible with the first. Life in the mafia is fraught with uncertainty, distrust, suspicion, paranoid anxiety, misunderstanding

DEFINE: Explains a second function of mafia ritual beyond its primary purpose—uncertainty reduction in a distrustful social environment.

Life in the mafia is fraught with uncertainty, distrust, suspicion, paranoid anxiety, misunderstanding: Who is the strongest? Who will be the successor? Is Don Peppe really a mafioso? Is he about to arrack another Don Peppe? Is Mr. X really protected by Don Peppe or just pretending? Is Don Peppe still strong enough to protect Mr. X? Mistakes in answering these questions occur all the time and account for many of the deaths which notoriously afflict this trade. Reading the testimony of the pentiti, one realizes that mafiosi scrutinize every sentence uttered by other mafiosi, searching for potential ambiguities, oblique messages, or subtle traps. Moreover, if a mafioso has treacherously murdered once-and most murders in the mafia are treacherous-the possibility of becoming the victim of similar treachery acquires an overwhelming salience. There is no safe, stable haven within easy reach.

XREF: Connects to game theory and signaling theory — the mafia as a high-stakes case of information asymmetry and strategic ambiguity in communication.

As a result, there is a joint interest in its preservation. The cartel created after the Second World War and the regulations it introduced were largely devoted to that purpose: to keep the reputation good, to regulate entry, to discourage impostors who might want to make unlicensed use of the trademark.

The shared fundamental ingredient is neither a centralized structure nor a well-defined and permanent organizational arrangement. It is rather a successful commercial identity as suppliers of genuine protection. The mafia can be defined as a particular trademark of the protection industry.

SEED: Could be an article angle examining modern organizations, gang culture, or even legitimate businesses as 'trademarks' built on trust and reputation rather than formal structure.

Most accounts of mafia protection are biased by the way they become known to us, for we usually hear only about those occasions when something goes wrong and blood is spilled. When things go well, there is either nothing to reveal or no reason to reveal it. The picture we get of protection, then, reflects only interventions after the event, after a dispute has arisen or a crime has occurred. But protection is not simply a repressive measure. On the contrary, as we know, its predominant role is one of deterrence.

XREF: Relates to selection bias and the visibility of successes versus failures — same dynamic as survivorship bias in business and scientific literature.

The dramatic contrast between the official position of mafiosi in the community and their scams within, and sometimes beyond, their community suggests that the transactions in which they specialize have little to do with their nominal employment. "The consideration in which a mafioso is held within the Cosa Nostra is not tied... to his profession or degree," says Anconino Calderone (Arlacchi 1992: 29). Mosely the mafioso's work is mundane: mafiosi double as drivers, guards, janitors, garbage collectors, farmers, shepherds, butchers, small contractors, agricultural middlemen, millers, clerks, undertakers, bartenders, gas station attendants, sellers of stationery, flowers, linens, men's clothing, new and used vehicles.

Those who are members of both the mafia and the professional sector—financiers, entrepreneurs, politicians, lawyers, doctors—are not so much producers as consumers of protection: they are internalized customers occupying social positions which allow them to pay handsomely for protection.

DEFINE: Clarifies the conceptual distinction between mafia members who produce protection and professional members who are 'internalized customers' consumers of it.

The lawyer in charge of liquidating the assets of Sindona's fraudulently collapsed financial empire was himself liquidated in Milan in 1979 by a small-time Italo-American mafioso (Stajano 1991).

QUESTION: The word 'liquidated' here signals dark humor — the liquidation of assets becomes literal liquidation of a person. Worth noting the deliberate wordplay.

Their membership was probably convenient for other mafiosi such as Stefano Bontade who, among other things, were thereby spared having to pay taxes and returned the favor with various forms of protection (SC: IV, 67).

The Salvos are best understood in contrast to the Costanzos—building contractors from Catania—who chose to remain outside customers. According to Calderone: "None of the Costanzos is formally a member. My brother told me that Enzo Costanzo had the right qualities to become one and that for a while he was undecided. But had Costanzo become a man of honor, he would have had to be introduced as such to all the other men of honor, who would have felt entitled to go directly to him in order to obtain jobs and other favors; and had he refused, he would have run the risk of being 'deposed,' no doubt losing his tranquillity" (AC: I, 248).

But another, larger contractor said his firm opted for purchasing supplies at the prescribed stores because this left no trace of their transactions with mafiosi (I-1).

XREF: Parallels the logic of money laundering and anonymous financial trails — clean intermediaries deliberately obscure direct criminal connections.

These statements illustrate some important points: (I) it is possible for a client to negotiate the extent and frequency of mafia intervention; (2) mafiosi prefer long-term contracts; and (3) the police are seen as a competing supplier of protection.

Because Catania is on the border of traditional mafia territory, where the mafia's monopoly is less secure than in western Sicily, customers there have been able to exercise more choice than in Palermo. Catania is notable for the existence of three independent protection groups—the Cursoti, the Carcagnusi, and the Malpassoti—which are not part of the mafia cartel. … According to Calderone, a large building contractor "was protected by an important man from the Cursoti gang." A dealer in wholesale fish "had a small entourage of undistinguished delinquents, from whom he was receiving protection and to whom he gave a lot of money"

XREF: Connects to economic theories of competitive markets versus monopolistic violence, and to the broader theme of how mafia cartels control territory.

The nature of the protection contract is also conditional upon the relative strength of customer and mafioso. Other things being equal, legal businesses are less vulnerable to the mafioso's monopoly, for they can always resort to the law. Similarly, the mafioso with many customers is more independent than the mafioso with just one. Finally, a powerful customer is always treated with respect. The Costanzos were influential and wealthy, and they enjoyed political protection and the friendship of a prominent mafioso from another province. Their firm was effectively a monopoly. As a result, far from being tyrannical, the protection provided by the Calderone brothers appears at times to have been subject to the whims of their clients

The mafia at times polices its territory as if it were responsible for public safety. Young thugs are recruited just to keep them off the street (see Chapter 3), and Latin lovers who harass women are not permitted an easy or indeed a long life. The presence of mafiosi and their enforcement of moral values may be responsible for the popular impression that Sicilian women are less frequently the target of macho attentions than women in other parts of Italy, presumably because one never knows to whom the potential victim may be related.

QUESTION: Curious whether Sicilian women actually do face less harassment, or whether this is folk impression. Also worth asking: does mafia 'moral enforcement' have other documented social effects?

Unless they have a direct interest at stake, mafiosi do not protect a nameless, faceless "public," which would be difficult to "tax." Only in small towns, where everybody can be controlled, do mafiosi occasionally appoint themselves caretakers of anything that could be called law and order. Specific individuals make far more appealing clients and are often energetically solicited.

The services offered by mafiosi are comprehensive. The Cassina construction firm won a contract to build the new banks of a river which cut across the town of Ribera. Threatened with prosecution, Luciano Cassina revealed that "the sums we paid were not for material supplies received from [Carmelo] Colletti, but represented payment for 'services' of a different nature which Colletti had provided for us" (OSAG: 98-99; OSAG Arnone: 153). The builder was eager to stress that he had not been intimidated by Colletti, who "had always behaved correctly." Don Carmelo "solved problems," such as ensuring a constant and reliable flow of building materials to the site (OSAG Arnone: 193), mediating on every controversy with the locals (pp. 149-151), "preventing trade union activities which might jeopardize the productivity of the site" (OSAG: 170), and making sure no thefts occurred (p. 151).

DEFINE: Clarifies the practical range of 'services' that mafia figures sell, extending beyond violence to logistics, dispute mediation, and suppressing union activity.

The essence of these various protection services seems to be dispute settlement. The mafiosi themselves view their trade in this way. In the conversation with his Sicilian friends secretly recorded by Canadian police in Montreal, Paul Violi remarked: "Our life consists always of encouraging reason, of fixing things for someone or other... When a person comes into conflict with other people and does not know where to turn, he knows that you are there and comes to you... because he knows that if he comes to you, you can... [sort out] the situation somehow" (OSPA Stajano: 59-60).

DEFINE: Reframes what mafiosi actually do: their core trade is resolving conflicts, not merely physical protection or violence.

Whether a mafioso protects either the debtor or the creditor or mediates between the two depends on the bargaining position of the parties involved. A man called Felice Bruno, for instance, received a loan of 10 million lire from an acquaintance. When he showed no sign of returning the money, the acquaintance went to him "in the name of Don Pietrino," the deputy boss of Santa Maria del Gesù in Palermo. I leave it to the reader to decide whether or not Bruno paid up (OSPA: VIII, 1532).

XREF: Echoes coercive power dynamics in economic transactions beyond organized crime — how intermediaries wield influence based on relative leverage.

In 1969 a man hurriedly lent a substantial sum to a group of three borrowers whose primary virtue was a connection with the Agrigento mafia. When he demanded payment, he was kidnaped at the Palermo airport, held for a few hours, and invited to reflect on his situation. He reemerged fully convinced of the advisability of accepting the mediation of Antonio Ferro, a friend of Colletti's and a prominent boss of the Agrigento region. Ferro acted as guarantor of a settlement which stipulated that the creditor was to be paid back, but not in full (OSAG: 452).

QUESTION: How common was extrajudicial mafia mediation in this era, and did it effectively bypass state contract enforcement?

One final example is that of a wealthy landowner from Ribera who was owed 86 million lire by a local firm which went under. He agreed with the owners to a compromise repayment of 38 million lire. In the meantime, one of Colletti's proteges bought the firm and signed a check for 28 million lire. Colletti delivered the check in person, encouraging the lender to content himself with the lesser sum. "Knowing that he was an important man of respect whose word was like a contract," the lender accepted (OSAG: 169ff.).

According to Contorno: "The Cosa Nostra was born to help the poor and helpless... If something happened to [these] people, they did not go to the Carabinieri; they came to the family of their area [and said], 'They stole my car,' 'they stole [from] my house,' and we found those things for them" (TC-GdS, April 12, 1986). Since a theft can be seen as a breach of a particular contract called property rights, as I argued in Chapter 1, in analytical terms this form of protection is like dispure settlement.

DEFINE: Analytically frames mafia 'protection' as dispute resolution rather than simple coercion, reframing theft recovery as contract enforcement.

Many years ago a French noblewoman was robbed of an expensive fur and a precious necklace in front of the palace of Prince Lanza di Trabia. The following day the noblewoman was presented with nine furs and nine necklaces which did not include those stolen from her. The thief was a solo operator, and it was necessary to wait in order to recover the stolen goods. In fact, after a few days the necklace was found in the possession of a fence, and the fur was found in Canicattia year later. The mafia had spread the word. It took time to trace the goods, but the stolen articles were reported as soon as they surfaced.(La Stampa, September 4, 1989)

By Salvatore Contorno's account, the majority of the mafia's customers are ordinary businessmen who need protection against thieves, although he makes it perfectly clear that, if only to protect their customers efficiently, mafiosi must be in contact with the underworld (for, as we shall see, thieves may also be protected). Contorno, asked by the judge about the relationship between petty criminals and the family, testified: "We looked for the boys who ran around committing robberies. We approached them, [told them] not to do silly things in the district, not to steal. If they were able men, we tried to turn them into men of honor" (TC-GdS, April 19, 1986). He denied that policing petty criminals is a straightforward matter and added that, although in principle one needs explicit permission to steal in a particular area, not all thieves know somebody in the Cosa Nostra, so they may leave the district and steal independently.

QUESTION: How does the mafia reconcile protecting legitimate businessmen while recruiting 'able men' thieves into their own ranks?

Stealing may be punished even when the culprit is himself a man of honor. Damiano Caruso took part in the so-called "slaughter of Viale Lazio" in 1969, says Calderone, and this action "had gone to his head and he did not want to obey anyone any longer." He was subsequently banished to the United States, where he became the cause of complaints from Charles Gambino himself, then the "boss of bosses." When he returned to Palermo, according to Calderone, he robbed a store belonging to a man of honor, as well as a jewelry shop owned by a protégé of Toto Riina. Caruso was punished for his audacity, murdered in Milan together with his mistress and her fourteen-year-old daughter.

DEFINE: Clarifies that 'men of honor' designation does not exempt members from punishment — the honor code governs conduct within the organization itself.

Although perhaps their most important clients, the Costanzos were not the only customers protected by the Catania family. The owners of a furniture store, for instance, asked for help in getting rid of an unlicensed extortionist. According to Calderone, Nitto Santapaola went in person to deliver the 200,000 lire the crook had demanded. The unfortunate man immediately understood his mistake, which cost him his life. Subsequently Santapaola became a partner in the furniture store, a comfortable and characteristic method of indirect payment for protection (see also Bonanno 1983: 152). Calderone tells us that Santapaola was also frequently invited to dine at the Costa Azzurra restaurant in the early 1980s, where he served as a warning sign directed by the owner at a freelance extortionist (AC: I, 179).

XREF: Connects to literature on racketeering and how criminal organizations regulate markets through violence and reputation.

Protectors need to have a monopoly over their clients, and if this ambition is frustrated, they become very unhappy. The face of the would-be extortionist, however, is not always equally cheerless. If he is an isolated counterfeiter, he is doomed; but if he is someone to be reckoned with, and susceptible to negotiation, the monopoly may either be restored by less extreme means or occasionally even shared.

XREF: Connects to economic theory on protection, extortion, and state formation — reminiscent of Olson's stationary vs. roving bandits.

Almost as if he were propounding a theory, Anronino Calderone explains how the risk of "unfair" competition between protectors begins at home. Salvatore Torrisi, under boss of the Catania family at the time, was secretly extorting protection money from Carmelo Costanzo. "Costanzo informed my brother, who then began treating Torrisi coldly. Realizing that my brother knew what had happened, Torrisi decided to take up the matter with the whole family during a meeting. The matter was serious because protection was being supplied by my brother, and it was therefore not acceptable that others should ask for additional sums on their own initiative. In addition, there was the risk that others in the family might follow Torrisi's example"

DEFINE: Illuminates the internal logic of 'fair' competition in protection rackets within the Mafia hierarchy.

Tommaso Buscetta and Antonino Calderone both maintain that there was a rule in the Cosa Nostra forbidding kidnaping, and with a few exceptions the mafiosi tried to enforce it. "The commissione," says Buscetta, "decided that kidnaping should no longer be committed in Sicily, not for humanitarian reasons but because of a straightforward utilitarian calculation. Kidnaping creates a general sense of hostility among the population, and this is counterproductive if it happens in those areas, such as Sicily, where the mafia is traditionally entrenched; besides, kidnaping attracts a lot of attention... from the police"

XREF: Connects to broader literature on how criminal organizations regulate themselves to avoid law enforcement attention and public backlash.

According to Antonino Calderone, his brother Giuseppe, during the first meeting of the reconstituted commissione in 1975, promoted a vote in favor of a rule against kidnaping precisely in order to protect the Costanzos, because my brother, in spite of being a man of great prestige within the mafia, was like a general without soldiers and feared that if somebody kidnaped the Costanzos, he would be unable to defend them adequately. Right at that time, in order to protect them, he made them recruit Domenico Condorelli as their driver, and for some time Pietro Rampulla worked for them too. My brother also encouraged them to buy pistols and not to go out unarmed. He knew, however, that these measures were not very effective.

It is a fact that in the 1970s in Sicily there were very few kidnapings by comparison with the rest of Italy for the same period. Kidnaping was forbidden mainly because its impact on regular customers was so drastic.

When a kidnaping did occur, punishment was merciless. Vincenzo Sinagra testified that a man of about fifty, unaware of [my cousin's] relationship with the mafia, made clear to my cousin his intention, as soon as he got out [of prison], to carry out a kidnaping and asked my cousin to help. In telling me about this episode my cousin said, "This must die" [chistu 'avi a moriri], meaning that, by planning a kidnaping against the mafia's will, that man had signed his own death warrant.

XREF: Shows the mafia's absolute territorial control over criminal enterprise, comparable to how cartels enforce their monopoly on crime.

But Colletti was not always capable of delivering the goods. His relentless pressure on a Palermo hospital to hire his girlfriend as a nurse came to nothing. He also promised to advance the career of Vito Cascioferro, an engineer with the telephone company, in exchange for the speedy installation of his phone; but he never made good on his promise. Still, he was apparently a man who could not say no to a friend in need.

Contorno clearly establishes a connection between cash and partnership: when a businessman received an offer of protection, he "either paid a cut or became partners" (TC: 19, TC-GdS, April 19, 1986).

Buying goods from a specific dealer is a common form of payment, amounting to the supply of protection from competition on behalf of the beneficiary. Calzetta reports, for instance, that "[Michele] Graviano used to go around telling everyone to buy their iron from Giuseppe Casella because this was in [Graviano's] interest. He intimated that everyone should continue to buy iron there even if the price was 50 lire higher [per kilo] than that offered by other dealers" (SC: II, 62).

DEFINE: Exemplifies how patron-client buying acts as a form of protection payment or extortion, not just a commercial transaction.

In a recorded telephone conversation Colletti is heard guaranteeing Antonio Nicosia his backing for reelection to the managerial board of a bank; in return, Nicosia promises to secure both a promotion for Colletti's nephew and the title commendatore for Colletti himself.

XREF: Connects to broader patterns of political patronage and vote-buying in Italian clientelism.

Calderone recalls: "I personally met Onorevole Calogero Volpe [a member of parliament] who was ritually introduced to me by my brother as a man of honor, in Caltanisetta, in [Volpe's] office" (AC: II, 594).

QUESTION: This raises questions about the extent of the Mafia's ties to political power in postwar Italy — Volpe was a sitting MP, not a marginal figure.

If votes are a commodity, elections become a transaction in which voters are sellers and politicians buyers. But this market is a cumbersome one in which the buyer is confronted, first, with a question of scale; that s, in any sizable constituency no candidate can realistically negotiate with each individual voter. Next there is the problem of verification (how can the candidate be sure that voter X voted for him?) and hence of trust (that is, should X be paid for his vote before or after the election?). Finally there is the issue of payment: what is the most efficient way to pay all the people who sell their votes? The sellers, too, have their difficulties, for how can they be sure that a candidate will pay up once they have voted for him? A more ideal setting for the mafia can scarcely be imagined.

XREF: Connects to concepts of vote buying as a principal-agent problem and the trust/verification frictions described in market design literature.

According to Calderone, each member of a mafia family can count on about forty or fifty relatives and friends "who slavishly follow his directions. This gives some idea of the importance of the role of the mafia in electoral contests. It is enough for the regione to suggest voting for a given parry for tens of thousands of votes to converge on that party, with the result that candidates who are not hostile to the mafia, or who even favor it, are elected" (AC: I, 260-270).

XREF: Connects to broader patterns of clientelism and machine politics where organized groups control voting blocs, historically seen in US urban politics as well as Southern Italy.

Both radicals and prominent socialists such as Bettino Craxi and Nino Buttitta denied all allegations of mafia influence. Although active collusion cannot be inferred, since the early 1980s both parties have nonetheless been active in trying to place strict formal limits on actions the authorities can take against the mafia—more so than any other party, including the Christian Democrats. They opposed the trials based on the evidence of mafiosi who had turned state's evidence and supported the controversial decisions of the Corte di Cassazione—chaired by Judge Corrado Carnevale—which failed to uphold the verdicts of other courts.

QUESTION: Were these parties compromised by mafia ties, or were they principled civil-libertarian defenders? Worth investigating.

It would be ludicrous, however, to expect illegal protection to be flawless. Even legal insurance companies may dodge the claims of honest customers who have been paying them for a lifetime, and legitimate states violate the rights of their own citizens. The drawbacks of mafia protection, however, are particularly marked and unpleasant. … Holding a monopoly over power essentially free from any form of external control makes it tempting to trample on the rights of others. This is a generalized human weakness which, when it comes to the mafia, is part and parcel of everyday life.

XREF: Connects to broader political theory about the corrupting effect of unchecked power, e.g., Lord Acton's dictum about absolute power. Extends well beyond the mafia example to governance generally.

This suggests that, if many dealers employ private protection, it becomes difficult to distinguish genuine abuses from failure of protection. This problem is the source of much confusion for police and observers alike, who, by applying a universal logic typical of legitimate states, are inclined to be inflexible in their interpretation and to believe that victims are invariably innocent. And indeed sometimes they are; but the role of victim is a shifting one, and those who complain may simply be those who on that particular occasion were for some reason let down by their own protector.

In the past it used to be absolutely forbidden to steal in the families' territories. If the thief was caught, he was first severely warned and then, if he lapsed again, physically punished. By the time I came back from Brazil [in 1972, after his arrest and extradition] I learned with disgust at the Ucciardone [prison] that times had changed and that it was even possible to commit crimes against property... so long as one had permission from a man of honor, who, in granting it, earned a share of the profits. (TB: III, 137)

QUESTION: This decay of internal moral codes under institutionalization parallels other organized groups. Worth tracing what caused this shift in the 1960s-70s.

By making protection available to thieves and robbers, the mafia encourages crime; in addition, while it takes a portion of the profits from perpetrators, it gives added incentive to victims to enlist its protection.

Among the consequences of mafia protection, those associated with violent competition among mafiosi are possibly the worst for customers. Kidnaping, extortion, and damage to property at the expense of a rival's client are common ways of undermining his credibility in anticipation of a more direct attack.

Mariano Marsala was on a trip to Australia when a series of unlicensed extortion attempts occurred in Vicari. When a building contractor received a demand for protection money and refused, his construction site and machinery were damaged. The victim tried to negotiate a smaller payment until Don Mariano—his regular protector—came back. On his return, Don Mariano managed to get him a substantial discount but could not entirely put an end to the demands, for his rivals were gaining strength. Around the same time another firm was being pressured to recruit a member of this rival faction as a guard, a traditional form of veiled extortion observed by Franchetti over a century ago. The customary first refusal was countered by the customary bomb on the premises, which this time failed to explode. Undeterred by their incompetence, the newcomers kept up the pressure until ultimately the existing guard was fired and the mafioso hired in his stead. Don Mariano is reported by his son to have chastised the perpetrators, but by that time there was little else he could do. By means of intimidation tactics, protection contracts in the area were already changing hands

The cartel achieved these impressive results with at most the assistance of corrupt politicians who rejected new applicants. But collusive arrangements remain intrinsically fragile: in the late 1970s one firm tried to increase its share by enlisting the protection of an aggressive gang, the Nuova camorra Organizzata. The other funeral homes first attempted to repel the move politically, as it were, then called in rival racketeers. The catch is that protectors, once enlisted, invariably overstay their welcome.

XREF: Connects to general insights about collusion, organized crime, and the fragility of trust-based arrangements in competitive markets.

Although it is difficult to establish ex post facto whether a given collusive arrangement would have come about even without mafia intervention, the availability of mafia services generally makes collusion more likely, more elaborate, and more enduring.

Polish immigrants cleaning windshields at traffic lights in Rome provide an instance of how an innocuous trade, when it is not regulated by law, can generate territorial disputes. In 1989 this business was lucrative: each man made between 100,000 and 300,000 lire a day, and, according to the Carabinieri, violent fights arose over the allocation of the most profitable intersections. The cleaners, who were unable to cooperate, attracted the attention of the authorities (Repubblica, August 2, 1989). Had private enforcement agencies been on hand as they are in Naples and Palermo, they might have been called in instead to prevent conflict.

XREF: Connects to game theory and common-pool resource problems, where unregulated access to valuable territory triggers contention in the absence of clear property rights. SEED: Potential angle for how informal economies self-organize violence or delegate it to private enforcement when the state's regulatory machinery is absent.

But since mafia families are themselves organized by geography rather than by function, the intricacy of the protection market impinges on the economy. Permission cooperate in a given area must be sought if one is to work in a territory other than one's own: "It must be clear once and for all," says Salvatore Contorno, "that in order to build or begin any significant activity, it is necessary to obtain the permission of the family with jurisdiction over that territory" (TC: 19). Moreover, permission must be sought through the mafioso who controls the area where the firm is normally based.

A tangled case of territorial sharing is reported by Antonino Calderone. Under the protection of a local man of honor, a dealer had a monopoly on bulldozer and tractor sales in Bagheria, near Palermo, until a rival dealer, also from Bagheria, went into business in the same area under the protection of rival mafiosi. The ensuing conflict was protracted. When the first dealer sought additional protection from the Carcagnusi, an independent gang from Catania, the second retaliated by recruiting the Catania mafia family, traditional archenemies of the Carcagnusi (AC: II, 355-356).

To buyers this practice is often presented as a safeguard against the risk of cheating: "Buy from A (or sell to A) and you will be safe. Just let A know I sent you." But when the practice works, it is irrelevant whether customers buy from A or B since neither A nor B will steal the other's customers; instead they will agree "not to accept or seek business from customers who [are] currently served by another member" of the cartel (Reuter 1987: 28). What happens if the agreement is breached is easy to guess. Vincenzo Sinagra testified that the brother of a man "who had taken the liberty of selling construction supplies to somebody else's customer was violently beaten (VS: I, 138). Customers effectively become part of the supplier's assets; they are thus internalized and can be traded like any other form of property.

XREF: Relates to economic theory on market structure, cartel behavior, and the internalization of customer relationships as assets.

Friendship among mafiosi has none of the qualities with which the term is commonly associated (Silver 1989). It draws a rhetorical veil over what is simply a prosaic exchange. The concept is similar, for analytical purposes, to that of territory, which also serves to confine competition within controllable boundaries.

DEFINE: Explains how the mafia term 'friendship' functions rhetorically, analogous to 'territory' as a boundary-setting concept.

The primary victims of collusion are the consumers, who end up purchasing lower-quality goods at higher prices. Potential competitors suffer as well, for successful collusion makes it so difficult for outsiders even to contemplate entering an industry that overt intimidation becomes redundant. The enforcement of internal agreements is thus much more effective than the brutal discouragement of rivals. Finally, "since racketeers increase the confidence of participating entrepreneurs that the cartel will endure, incentives for efficient production are even more sharply reduced than they would be in a conventional cartel, where certainty about future success is always limited and the probability of imminent competition never vanishes" (Reuter 1987: 7-8).

Asked why the fish market was so lacking in competition and populated by far fewer dealers than was either reasonable or desirable, he replied that there was really no one up to the task of wholesale dealing in the Sicilian capital. Probed further, he added that the inhabitants of Palermo had a special vocation for using the hand-pulled cart (carrettino), suitable only for hawking. Typical of a uniquely Sicilian behavioral science, which impassively maintains the most extravagant explanations when at odds with officialdom, Professor Macaluso's insight did not impress the commission, which politely described it as "strangely banal."

XREF: Connects to Sicilian honor culture and resistance to centralized authority found in other Southern Italy studies. SEED: The carrettino as a metaphor for local resistance to markets could seed a piece on informal economies.

That is an extremely small number of intermediaries for any market, let alone the largest fish market in a maritime country. The commission noted "the absence of any initiative, not only on the part of direct producers [fishermen] but also cooperatives of producers as well as wholesale dealers" and cook it as evidence of a "gravely abnormal situation" (CPM-RMI: 96). The four middlemen together constituted an oligopoly, or rather, if we take into account the distribution of trade among them in 1964 (see Table 3), a duopoly: as much as 55 percent of the total value of trade was controlled by just one of the mandatari alone; another accounted for 32 percent, and, well behind, the other two had 8.5 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively (CPM-RMI: 95-96).

The key strategy, equivalent to customer allocation, consisted in binding fishing firms to sell only to prescribed mandatari; producers were thus the "property" of these middlemen (CPM-RMI: 97-98). Evidence was also found of a "development of connections" with respect to large buyers: the typical mandatario's family included wholesale dealers, fishmongers, and private auctioneers, even though by law the auctioneers should have been municipal employees (CPM-RMI: 96-97).

The fact remains that there are no applicants for the job. Such is the degree of collusion both within the market and between market agents and local authorities that barriers to entry need not be violent. The reputation of the fish market among other dealers in the city is that anyone trying to break into it would go the way of the fish, but in reverse. This reputation has sufficed throughout the years; there is still no record of violence connected with the market. The commission referred to the situation as pax mafiosa (CPM-RMI: 94), and there is nothing to indicate that the description needs to be revised.

DEFINE: The term 'pax mafiosa' (mafia peace) is introduced to describe a collusive market equilibrium sustained by reputation rather than violence.

The economic trajectory of the Palermo fruit and vegetable market diverges dramatically from that of the fish market. During the 1950s and 1960s this market was the arena for a number of criminal episodes which attracted the attention of the authorities. In 1955-56 at least ten men were murdered in various circumstances related to the market; eight more were killed in 1962-63 (CPM-RMI: 3-5). All sorts of irregularities were common, and a large proportion of commissionari—commission agents also known as scaristi, the counterparts of the fish market's mandatari—boasted criminal records.

XREF: Contrasts sharply with the fish market (mandatari) already discussed — the two markets diverge dramatically in criminality despite parallel commission-agent structures. QUESTION: Why did the produce market attract more criminal violence than the fish market? Worth investigating what structural factors differed.

The change of location unsettled the equilibrium which had previously guaranteed stability, provoking a scramble among established scaristi to obtain the best stands, generating tension over the allocation of additional ones, and sparking off a conflict between the two mafia families with jurisdiction over the old and new market areas. The process of adjustment was "left in the hands of the strongest," while local authorities abstained from intervening (CPM-RMI: 68).

This painful transition, however, had unexpected consequences. The substantial increase in the number of commissionari, coupled with structural changes within the trade, had the dual effect of enhancing competition and decreasing the demand for mafia services. The last episode of violence took place in 1977, when two brothers were murdered at their stand. (This murder evidently had nothing to do with the market and was apparently in retaliation for the kidnaping of a relative of the boss of Monreale; Santino and La Fiura 1990: 402).

QUESTION: What specific structural changes within the trade drove this decline? Worth chasing to understand the mechanism behind organized crime retreating from markets.

In the (not infrequent) case of insolvency, the debtor rarely has to fear for his life. The small amounts involved simply do not justify violence. The deadbeat, however, is ostracized: in a matter of days every scarista knows about the debt, and the culprit is required to pay in cash. When larger amounts are owed, the view is not so lenient. One source reports: "In the Piazza Scaffa case the debt was several million lire. A debt of this size blows such a hole in your budget that it is understandable that they got shot. Nobody likes not to be held in due respect." The incident he refers to occurred on the night of October 18, 1984, in the courtyard of the slaughterhouse in Piazza Scaffa in Palermo. Eight men involved in the horse trade were massacred, possibly because of an unpaid debt.

XREF: Connects to informal enforcement and honor-economy dynamics common in other organized-crime contexts.

The commissionari receive goods either from middlemen or direct from producers, and are paid a commission of 10 percent from the latter and 8 percent from the former. Middlemen who buy goods from rural producers (often in advance of the harvest) and truck them to the city have declined in number. Some commissionari now act as their own middlemen, and producers, too, have changed their attitude. Once farmers were afraid to deal with city slickers, preferring to rely on a middleman whom they could regard as a friend. In doing so they traded higher profits for reduced anxiety. Today's young farmers are not so timid; they deliver in person to the market.

The supply of fresh fish is constrained both by limited natural resources—which are either unaffected or depleted by technological development— and by the face that the product is channeled through a limited number of established ports. Fishing fleets, furthermore, are fewer in number and easier to control than farmers. In the fruit and vegetable trade the sources of supply are both many and widely scattered, and transport routes and delivery points outside the wholesale market can multiply unobserved. The rapid increase in agricultural productivity and conservation techniques in the years since the war, as well as the improved efficiency of transport, accentuated these differences, making the produce trade virtually impossible to monopolize.

Before the rural savings banks started to function properly, credit was in the hands of the man of respect. Growers who wanted credit were obliged to sell their goods to him. As sources multiplied, credit no longer came with the same strings attached. It is now granted sparingly to customers rather than producers and is a means of fostering competition rather than enforcing collusion. Creditors are therefore less inclined to resort to violence against insolvent debtors lest they lose their clients to more benign rivals.

A group of six or seven commissionari—those said to be of "great respect"—apparently collude over the contracts with institutions such as schools, hospitals, military barracks, and nursing homes. Each commissionario supplies specific institutions, and the problem of competition is eliminated radically: by common agreement only one commissionario bids for each contract. In comparison to private customers, public institutions are fewer in number and take out longer-term contracts; in addition, they buy fixed quantities and are generally less demanding about quality, less concerned about price, and corruptible. In short, they are easy to monopolize and share.

Oligopoly, however, makes for a more precarious equilibrium than competition. Should a member of the cartel try to obtain a larger share, as in the case of the funeral homes in Naples, or should those excluded from the cartel start a countercoalition, the equilibrium would collapse, and that "respect" would be shattered.

According to one Sicilian contractor, mafia intervention can be avoided. He himself had coordinated "lines," ostensibly without being a mafioso. By yielding too readily to the mafia, he claimed, one loses the respect which may otherwise be sufficient to control collusion: "A lot of entrepreneurs end up in the arms of the mafia simply because they believe it is inevitable" (I-3).

XREF: Connects to broader literature on how cognitive expectations of inevitability drive compliance with extortion and corruption, not just in Sicily.

Another form of auction, involving a predetermined discount, also lends itself to corruption: P sets both the initial price and a maximum discount, which remains secret. The contract goes to the firm whose bid comes closest to the price minus the correct discount. Bids that are either too high or too low are ruled out. This type of auction gives P something specific to sell: the amount of the optimal discount. If, for example, the set price is 1 billion lire and the "secret" maximum reduction is 15 percent, the firm which knows this will bid 850 million lire and win the contract. In this form of auction firms cannot collude without the assistance of P. If P is clever, he does not locate the threshold at a point which might easily be arrived at by chance. Instead, he chooses from a wide range of values, and even includes fractions to avoid the embarrassment of having more than one firm hit the mark (I-3). In principle this system could lead to the creation of monopolies in which P and a particular firm establish a long-term alliance at the expense of all other competitors. In practice, however, excluded firms would retaliate either by recruiting protectors of their own or going to the police.

DEFINE: Explains how the secret-discount auction variant works and why it lends itself to corruption unlike collusion-based forms.

Firms soon found a way of outwitting P. The method is simple: F1 agrees to pay P for the key piece of information after he gets the contract. F1 then secretly passes the information on to F2 in exchange for a share of the profits. When F1 withdraws, F2 walks out with the contract, owing P nothing. Of course, P then has an additional incentive to seek mafia protection, and to demand payment in advance. Such tricks may turn out to be too clever. More than one local administrator has lost his life because of deceptions of this kind. P, for instance, may sell the information to more than one firm; thus F1 and F2 both make the correct bid and find themselves at an awkward impasse.

Riccardo Misasi, minister for the Mezzogiorno in 1990 and leader of the Christian Democrats in Calabria, volunteered a solution to the problem of widespread bid rigging: I suggested to some regions, and to my [sic] Calabria in particular, an automatic mechanism which eliminates every discretionary element and establishes an automatic rotation among firms and consortiums selected strictly on the basis of the fairness of their behavior. It is a rule which, if generally applied, would violate the Constitution .... But can we not make an exception here in the fight against the mafia and corruption? This rule... would obliterate every chance of corruption, of anomalous relations between entrepreneurship and political power. (Repubblica, May 19, 1990) … In short, if mafia methods are bad, let us institutionalize them!

DEFINE: The passage illustrates the paradox of 'administered' or institutionalized mafia methods masquerading as anti-corruption mechanisms. QUESTION: Worth investigating: how often do well-intentioned 'automatic' allocation schemes actually mirror the cartel/monopoly logic they claim to combat?

There is only one large city in Italy where radio-dispatched taxi service does not work, and that is Palermo. The service, established elsewhere over the last twenty years, usually consists of a group of drivers who chip in to pay for a telephone number, advertise it, and pay an operator to distribute the calls to the drivers as they patrol the city. If anyone fails to contribute, it is simple enough to retaliate by cutting off his radio. At this level, cooperation is easily enforced and trust is not an issue.

XREF: Connects to the broader theme of how self-enforcing cooperative institutions succeed or fail depending on enforcement mechanisms, likely relevant to the book's larger argument about trust and social capital.

In Naples and Milan the solution is more satisfactory: the service is allocated to the driver who claims to be closest to the customer's address, and the risk of cheating is countered by the threat of punishment. Drivers have the right to police one another and, if in doubt about a call commandeered by another driver, are entitled to drive to the same address and, if they reach it first, to claim the customer for themselves. They may also report the culprit and have his radio disconnected for a period of time that increases according to the number of previous offenses. Other drivers are alerted to distrust driver X and monitor his behavior closely. Delays · cannot be attributed to unforeseen traffic problems (except for accidents), because drivers agree to assume that they should be capable of taking normal variations in traffic into account. Any incorrect estimate, in other words, is interpreted as evidence of cheating.

A radio service was initiated in Palermo in the early 1980s, but individual drivers soon opted our, claiming that everyone else was cheating. "If I answer a call, someone else answers after me pretending to be closer," one driver complained. As a result, by 1987, in a city of over a million inhabitants, the number of radio-dispatched taxis was down to a handful, and service was foundering. Drivers in Palermo maintained that it was not possible to catch cheaters in flagrante, though whether because they could not be bothered with policing or because of some other constraint remained unclear.

XREF: Classic collective action and tragedy of the commons dynamic, resonates with Ostrom's design principles for governing commons and game-theoretic accounts of cooperation.

But the introduction of realistic constraints on the behavior of drivers reveals that cheating runs up against several self-enforcing boundaries which may induce even dishonest drivers to behave.

Trust, therefore, need not carry the whole burden of cooperation (otherwise, it would fail in Oslo as in Naples). But neither is policing sufficient by itself. Policing relies on the existence of sufficient trust so that drivers need not feel obliged to monitor every call they lose, and enough demand to keep them busy, profitably diverting them from the temptation to spy on their colleagues.

A more convincing hypothesis is that overseeing a large population of itinerant drivers following unpredictable routes may be too complex and expensive a chore for any central agent to have an interest in acting as guarantor. Likewise, drivers would be reluctant to pay someone other than themselves to do the enforcing, since policing can be efficiently conducted only by drivers themselves as they travel at random through the city, each one representing a potential threat to all the others.

There are good reasons, then, for the mafia not to intervene. So we are back where we started: Why don't the drivers in Palermo sort out the problem for themselves? It may be that they simply trust one another less than elsewhere in Italy. It is not simply a cliché that Sicilian culture encourages people to see conspiracies in random events. If a driver were lucky enough to land a few extra runs in a day, the other drivers would almost automatically leap to the conclusion that be was cheating. What is more, once they had formed this opinion, no one could induce them to change their minds. In Sicily there is nothing as suspicious as luck.

XREF: Connects to the broader theme of how trust (or its absence) shapes economic cooperation — contrasts with cooperative communities and their self-policing.

If some drivers, however few, moonlight as agents for local enforcers with whom they are in privileged contact, this could explain the reluctance of drivers to police one another: there is always the risk of antagonizing the wrong people. To punish someone for cheating might upset an anonymous protector, who would take offense at the insult to his protégé. When in doubt, it is better to abstain.

Postscript, 1991: After ten years of failure, by 1991 radio-dispatched taxis were at last working in Palermo. In 1987 there had been no more than forty cars, and drivers were dropping out, whereas in 1991 the largest cooperative had 160 cars linked to the radio. How was the problem circumvented? In 1989 the drivers devised a new allocation system (as far as I know it is not applied anywhere else in Italy). Drivers qualify for calls by lining up in local parking lots; on arrival they declare their position to the operator. The operator allocates the call to the first driver in line in the parking lot nearest the caller. Even if another driver is passing closer to the caller, the call is nonetheless allocated to the first in line. The taxi's position is known in advance to the operator, and the other drivers can double-check simply by looking around the parking lot. Only when the nearest parking lot is empty is the call given to the driver who claims to be closest. To reduce cheating in this case, the operator attempts to keep track of destinations, and so too do the other drivers by keeping the radio on. As a result of this innovation in organizational technology, cheating is prevented and self-policing is avoided. It must be stressed, however, that this system is not a solution to the problem as I have described it but rather a different system altogether, more akin to the one which was used before the radio was introduced and in which the customers themselves telephoned the taxi rank. This new system is not efficient from the point of view of the customer, who on average waits longer and pays more (the meter starts running at the moment the call is taken). Customers living in the suburbs, in particular, are penalized, for parking lots are concentrated in the city center. Still, it is better than no taxi service at all.

XREF: Connects to the broader book's theme of self-organizing coordination systems and the Coasean problem of who bears the cost of information verification.

The concept of illegality is an elastic one whose boundaries are determined at the discretion of the state. The definition of what constitutes an illegal commodity is subject to changes in legislation and varies from country to country. There is one feature, however, that all illicit markets have in common: they are both unprotected and subject to legal action.

DEFINE: Frames 'illegality' as a discretionary, state-determined category rather than a fixed one, and defines illicit markets by their shared exposure to legal action despite lacking protection.

Why is it that this improbable sector is susceptible to organization? Partly because of the general efficiency of protection in Palermo, and partly because, since there are so many perpetrators (not least because there are so many protectors), it is not in fact out of the question that two might in fact try to snatch the same bag. In any district in the city center one can find at least ten of these characters at work. In addition, the need for a reliable fence and shelter from both police and other criminals ties muggers to a particular area, and this makes them controllable.

XREF: Relates to how dense competitive markets generally invite coordination and informal governance — parallels economic theories of cartels and state formation.

Mafiosi came to the rescue. Exploiting their ability as guarantors, they raised capital from their families, other mafiosi, their customers, and fellow villagers who knew only that they were dealing with men of respect.

Thus, "it became necessary for the Cosa Nostra to turn the major smugglers into men of honor—that is [Tommaso] Spadaro, [Nunzio] La Mattina, and Michele Zaza—in order to make them more amenable to its will."

XREF: Connects to broader patterns of criminal organizations absorbing independent operators into their hierarchy to gain control and leverage.

The financial exposure of the mafia has crucial consequences, for it is no longer just money which is at stake but the credibility of the guarantor as well. This exposure generates a formidable incentive to ensure that the business runs smoothly in all its phases. When this functioning proved straightforward, mafiosi and smugglers remained separate; but when it became problematic, mafiosi responded by internalizing key smugglers.

A fourth shift was allocated to a member of the Brancaccio family. Every time the last group collected a shipload, twenty thousand boxes went to the commissione in exchange for organizing and policing the cartel.

Two persistent stereotypes—that mafiosi, like Don Corleone in The Godfather, were reluctant to embark on the drug trade, and that in Sicily they were occupied exclusively with rural affairs until the 1960s—are simply untrue. As early as 1935, Serafino Mancuso was sentenced by a U.S. court to forty years' imprisonment for dealing in narcotics. Deported in 1947, he returned to Alcamo, where he resumed with his brother what was to be a long-lived and successful business. The Mancusos were not just merchants; they were also competent in processing morphine (Serafino, for instance, reprocessed ten kilos of poor-quality heroin, "squeezing" five good kilos out of it). In 1947-48 Lucky Luciano, Frank Coppola, and Angelo Di Carlo were also deported to Italy and brought their expertise back to their homeland. These repatriations gave the trade new impetus (CPM: 74, 78, 622, 999).

DEFINE: Corrects the persistent stereotype that mafia avoided narcotics and stayed rural until the 1960s.

Italy was primarily a transit area for heroin, with most of it being absorbed by the U.S. market. The drug traveled from its source as either raw opium or morphine, although shipments of opium became increasingly uncommon, disappearing after 1963 (CPM: 1535). The advantage of morphine lies in the substantial weight reduction: two couriers carrying, say, ten kilos each could transport the equivalent in morphine of two hundred kilos of opium. Opium was mostly delivered by sea, whereas morphine could just as easily be sent by truck or plane. According to Contorno, morphine also liberated Sicilian dealers from the powerful boats belonging to Neapolitan smugglers, for any small boat would now do (TC: 159). To minimize losses in case of detection, large loads were sometimes split in Malta into multiple parcels (CPM: 1544).

Most refining took place in the south of France. When mafiosi provided the raw material, the drug would travel from Sicily to Marseilles and back again before leaving for the United States. In many cases, however, they were not involved in purchasing from source; but, except for a brief period from 1963 to 1968, coinciding with the internecine mafia war and its aftermath, they were invariably responsible for shipping the finished product to the American buyers. Mafiosi were attractive intermediaries because of their strong connections with the Sicilian Americans running the market in the United States. These ties allowed greater flexibility and safety. "In the relationships between mafioso organizers and the halo-American gangs receiving the merchandise, where there is mutual trust tested over time, it is possible for one courier to arrive from America with the money while the merchandise itself is entrusted to another courier" (CPM: 1023-24). Since no such privileged bonds existed between Sicilians and Middle Eastern suppliers, importing was a more cumbersome operation. A Sicilian envoy had to travel to the source and test the drug, and pay a large percentage in advance (CPM: 1023-24, 1694).

Guaranteeing transactions in the heroin market (see Moore 1977 for a lucid analysis) is even more arduous than in tobacco smuggling. On the one hand, relative to both price and quantity, drugs are lighter and more manageable, and hence easier to transport and hide. On the other hand, the disadvantages are considerable: the sources of supply are distant and difficult to contact and monitor; the financial commitment is considerable; and there is a long chain of intermediaries (Arlacchi 1983a: 219). The quality of opium varies, and there are no legitimate firms, as with tobacco, to select and standardize it; bad processing can ruin the merchandise; and, what is worse, everybody from big sellers to street pushers has a chance to steal or adulterate it. Under these conditions protection is scarcely child's play.

The Sicilian bosses were, according to the Carabinieri, "kept constantly informed about the course of the transport and shiploads, ready to give orders and instructions on how to overcome difficulties, correct mishaps, and sometimes settle disputes and disagreements... If need be, they themselves (traveled) from one continent to the other" (CPM: 1025). Yet, despite all precautions, many insoluble controversies arose. In 1956 the American mafiosi Carmine Lo Cascio and Joseph Mogavero discovered that the heroin sent from Italy by the Caneba brothers was of poor quality and melted at too low a temperature (below 220 degrees centigrade). They retaliated by sending an envoy to Italy with less money than agreed. Tests conducted jointly by both the envoy and the Caneba brothers showed that one of the two sources of raw material was in fact defective. Nonetheless, the brothers demanded the full sum as well as advance payment for any further transactions. In fact they got neither; Lo Cascio and Mogavero simply dropped all future business (CPM: 8).

The mafia war enforced a hiatus in trade until 1968. Then, at the beginning of the 1970s, the customs police detected a sharp increase in heroin-related activity. Arlacchi (1983a) suggests that the mafiosi had previously been unable to compete with wealthier groups because of financial constraints but provides no evidence. In fact, money was never in short supply. According to Contorno, most of it came from the United States anyway, and from investors outside the organization (TC: 159; also TC-GdS, April 21-23, 1986). An alternative explanation is simply that the demand for heroin in both American and European markets grew during that period to unprecedented levels, and thus more mafiosi felt encouraged to invest, and to invest more.

XREF: Echoes the general principle that demand-pull explains organized crime expansion better than organizational capability narratives.

The uncertainty of the trade was such that nobody supplied guarantees for the whole sequence of transactions, from source to retailing, lest they should share Manzella's fate. Protection was supplied on an ad hoc basis for specific transactions. … In general, protection was as fragmented as the market itself. In fact, its complexity demanded that each operation-importing from sources, refining and exporting to consumer markets-be performed by independent groups. Each of these groups included mafiosi as well as others.

Bontade refused simply to entrust the merchandise to the refiners lest they should either spoil it by accident or cream some of it off for themselves—realistic concerns.

XREF: This reflects the pervasive distrust characterizing Mafia organizational culture, where oversight was needed even among trusted business partners.

If membership was intended principally to guarantee good behavior, then initiating just a few from among these groups of brothers or other relatives was regarded as an efficient stratagem.

Striking the right balance was a tricky business. Bontade's family, for instance, probably paid the price for being excessively accommodating; the size of its membership, which in the course of the 1970s increased from 50 to over 160 (see Chapter 5), was certainly among the causes of the mafia war of the early 1980s.

As these cases illustrate, the game of trust and distrust in this trade reached unsurpassed heights. When describing the traffic in drugs, even more than other markets, the pentiti—Mannoia in particular—exude suspicion, paranoia, and resentment. They complain of other people's cheating while boasting of their own. How lethal their own "addiction" was for them is indicated by how many died in the internecine conflict of the early 1980s—five hundred is a conservative estimate—how many others turned state's evidence to save their own skin, and how many more ended up in prison as a result.

Mafia families share a common asset of reputation, equivalent to a trademark: a guarantee of high-quality protection and effective intimidation. This reputation is distinct from that of each individual family or member, but each gains from it, and each has an interest in maintaining its distinctive features. The same action undertaken by a protection group which cannot successfully claim to be a recognized part of the mafia is less effective and more costly to implement. This understanding of the mafia makes sense of the mystifying ambiguity of interfamily relationships, in which conflict and cooperation, internecine fighting and common identity, coexist. It also makes it possible to grasp how the mafia and its symbols may be externally fabricated without therefore inferring that the whole phenomenon is a fantasy. As the case of Cacao Meravigliao (see Chapter 6) shows, an invented brand name can become attractive to real producers.

DEFINE: Reframes the mafia as a reputation/trademark system where collective standing enhances enforcement and protection, rather than purely a criminal organization.

The commissione provided no executive government other than that which its individual member families agreed on; it offered a forum for bargaining over market distribution, for seeking agreement on coordinated actions, and for upholding standards of behavior beneficial to the industry as a whole. It was responsible for the introduction of rules regulating recruitment, reputation, and the legitimate use of the trademark.

DEFINE: Clarifies that the commissione was a consensus-based governing body rather than a hierarchical executive structure.

Typically, the status of an initiated member carries the possibility not just of consuming protection but of supplying it as well. It amounts to a special trading license. It is also true, however, that when customers are either especially important or difficult to keep under control, their bond with the family can be sanctioned by ritual membership.

DEFINE: Explains how mafia 'made men' status works as a reciprocal protection agreement, like a license for economic exchange.

Those who choose to enter such a trade must therefore both enjoy special competitive advantages and suffer from the absence of preferable alternatives. The former consist of special skills originating either from the fact that certain families and neighborhoods provide free training, as it were, or from unusual individual dispositions. In short, if one is not an insider by birth or a clever psychopath, one is unlikely to choose to become a mafioso.

In spite of much loose talk about ever-changing mafia, the supply of mafioso in Sicily has not changed much over the years. Many still come from the small towns of the interior.

The enduring connection with the country is matched by an even more extraordinary stability which disposes of another stereotype: no only did the mafia grow mainly in western Sicily, but, with the exception of Catania, it has remained there to this very day. Leopoldo Franchetti was intrigued by this geographic rigidity as long ago as 1876 (p. 55). A map plotting the incidence of homicides a lupara based on reports from the newspaper L'Ora in 1956-7 (Map 2) shows an almost perfect overlap with the maps of the Prefects in 1874 and that of Cutrera (1900a; see Map 1 in Chapter 4). More importantly, this overlap extends to a Carabinieri report of 1987 indicating the towns and villages in Sicily where the mafia is particularly virulent (these are marked with a triangle in Map 1).

XREF: Connects to the broader scholarly debate on whether organized crime clusters persist geographically or migrate. Also bears on modern mafia studies that track current presence.

Mafia families were not exported to America but emerged spontaneously, as it were, when the supply of and the demand for protection met: when, in other words, a sufficient number of emigrants moved there for independent reasons, some bringing along the necessary skills for organizing a protection market, and when certain events, notably the Great Depression and Prohibition, opened up a vast and lucrative market for this commodity.

Since it would be absurd to hypothesize that mafiosi did not export their industry because the North of Italy was less economically attractive than the South, it can only be concluded that the mafia is a difficult industry to export. Not unlike mining, it is heavily dependent on the local environment. Its initial costs can be met solely under a special combination of conditions since basic resources are expensive to produce in a void: information gathering and advertising, for instance, exploit independent networks of kinship, friendship, and ethnicity.

XREF: Parallels the idea that embedded industries or informal economies are tied to their local social fabric, similar to discussions of other locally-dependent industries.

In the Soviet republics, unlike in other former socialist countries, a plethora of candidates—from disbanded Red Army soldiers to unemployed athletes—is clamoring to man the protection market. In addition, ethnic groups with a reputation for private justice acquired in the black market under the communist regime, as well as muscular former party members, stand to take the lead in supplying private protection.

There is no ineluctable internal dynamic. Judge Falcone was convinced that the mafia is moving toward a more centralized structure and that the commissione, mandamenti, even families are in the process of being disbanded under the pressure of the so-called Corleonesi faction (Repubblica, May 13 and 21, 989; Falcone and Padovani 1991). This dissolution he saw as the consequence of the bloody internecine war and the number of mafiosi who turned state's evidence (had he been less humble, the judge might have added to the causes the forceful repressive campaign which started in the second half of the 1970s and in which he was a leading force). Centralization was intended to make the mafia stronger, and to focus on large-scale dealings rather than on local transactions. No conclusive evidence is as yet available; still, there is no economic law dictating that an industry must stay fragmented forever.

During the 1980s the situation of the mafia in Palermo became more uncertain. In 1986-87 the police received an unprecedented number of reports from shopkeepers complaining about the pressure to pay protection money to which they were being subjected. From October 1986 to April 1987 there were sixty-six such complaints, coming mostly from the center of the city and involving restaurants, automobile dealerships, hotels, discos, travel agencies, and all types of shops. The police could not understand why traditionally reticent merchants were suddenly coming forward. The fact was that they had been paying protection all along, but now the demands were coming from unfamiliar sources and were too outrageously high to be credible (the lowest reported demand was for 30 million lire, the highest for half a billion).

QUESTION: Why did merchants stay silent for so long under credible threats but break silence over outrageous ones? What threshold of absurdity triggers reporting?

The intensification of extortion may in fact prove that Falcone was right and that while the authentic mafia is withdrawing into more specialized areas, groups of dilettantes are entering the business—and making a mess of it. Moreover, the consequences of the absence of so many top mafiosi—whether in prison, on the run, or unnaturally deceased—have yet to be taken into account. A lasting reputation in this trade is not easy to improvise, and mafia bosses cannot be replaced overnight.

It depends, for instance, on whether the protection which the mafia supplies in daily litigations will one day be satisfactorily discharged by the courts, whose inefficiency at present is simply appalling—that is, it depends on whether the state will at last choose to deliver genuine protection. Above all, it depends on whether the scope for illegal protection is reduced by intelligent intervention—for instance, liberalizing the drug market, abolishing state control over the price of cigarettes, making the procedure for assigning public contracts simpler and more transparent, improving antitrust legislation and applying it to wholesale markets, redesigning the voting process to minimize opportunities for selling votes.

XREF: Connects to economics-of-crime literature on why organized crime fills vacuums left by weak institutions, echoing earlier readings on state capacity. Builds on: "Mafia thrives where state enforcement is absent and transactions are unstable"

As for some fresh thinking in jurisprudential matters, which—as I discussed in the introduction—have a tremendous impact on shaping the ideology of bargaining with the mafia, there are alas no signs at all. The notion of the mafia as an ordinamento giuridico, a legal system in its own right, lingers on, while there is a burning need for reconsideration. Between the pressure to accommodate the interests of parallel institutions and the urgent need not to let their independence work against the interests of the public, the Italian state has systematically yielded to the former.

10. mafi, mafio, or mafiun = in Piedmontese little, badly shaped, disfigured, but also rude, rough, stubbornly silent, careless (C. Zalli, Disionari Piedmonteis Italian, 2d ed., Carmagnola, 1830); according to Traina's Vocabolario del dialetto Siciliano (1868, quoted in Leonardo Sciascia's introduction to Calvi 1986), and also to Vincenzo Mortillaro's Dizionario Italiano-Siciliano (1876, quoted in Novacco), mafia originated from the Piedmontese term meaning camorra.

DEFINE: Clarifies the etymology of 'mafia,' tracing it to a Piedmontese term rather than a Sicilian one. XREF: Connects to the broader etymological origin of 'camorra' and the northern-to-southern Italian linguistic transfer.

16. Legend has it that in Easter week 1282, a beautiful Sicilian girl was raped by a French soldier, touching off a rebellion against the French oppressors (see also no. 18). According to Joe Bonanno (1983): "The terrified mother ran through the streets crying ma fia, ma fia. This means 'my daughter' in Sicilian... Ma fia soon became the rallying cry of the resistance movement" against the French (p. 39).

XREF: Connects to the broader history of Sicily's violent resistance and the origins of organized crime described in the source.

18. Mazzini Autorizza Furti Incendi Avvelenamenti (Mazzini authorizes theft, arson, and poisoning). This hypothesis is part and parcel of the extravagant idea that Giuseppe Mazzini was the founder of the mafia, a belief still earnestly upheld (Chandler 1976: 14ff). The similarities of the mafia ritual with that of the Carboneria—to which Mazzini belonged—and the pride taken in it by mafiosi, as in the fictional I Beati Paoli, may account for the conflation of the two.

DEFINE: Clarifies that the Mazzini-as-mafia-founder theory is an 'extravagant idea' that survives despite being implausible.

According to a script seized by the police, the wording of the oath appears to be the following: "[swear on my honor to be faithful to the Fratellanza just as the Fratellanza is faithful to me, and as this saint and these drops of my blood burn, so will I shed all my blood for the Fratellanza, and as this ash and this blood cannot return to their [original] state, so I cannot leave the Fratellanza." (Lestingi 1884: 455) This is the first account to contain the actual words of the oath. It differs from the previous version in a few details: the index finger is pierced rather than the thumb; the finger is tied with a thread in addition to being pierced; the ashes are scattered to the wind.

XREF: Connects to the history of the Sicilian Mafia's initiation rituals and how such secret societies formalize membership through binding oaths.

The tip of my middle finger was pierced by a needle, and blood was squeezed from it to soak a small paper image of a saint. The image was burnt, and holding the ashes in my hand, I was called upon to swear an oath more or less as follows: "I swear to be loyal to my brothers, never to betray them, and if I fail, may I burn and be turned to ashes like the ashes of this image."

Now Mr. Maranzano said to everybody around the table, "this is Joe Cago," which I must explain is what most of the guys know me by ["Cago" was a corruption of "Cargo," his nickname as a boy). Then he tells me to sit down in an empty chair on his right. When I sit down, so does the whole table. Someone put a gun and a knife on the table in front of me. I remember the gun was a .38, and the knife was what you would call a dagger. After that, Maranzano motions us up again, and we all hold hands and he says some words in Italian. Then we sit down, and he turns to me, still in Italian, and talks about the gun and the knife. "This represents that you live by the gun and the knife," he says, "and you die by the gun and the knife." Next he asked me, "which finger do you shoot with?" I said, "this one," and I hold up my right forefinger. I was still wondering what he meant by this when he told me to make a cup of my hands. Then he put a piece of paper in them and lit it with a match and told me to say after him, as I was moving the paper back and forth, "this is the way I will burn if I betray the secret of this Cosa Nostra." All of this was in Italian .... [The Cosa Nostra] comes before everything—our blood family, our religion, our country.

These rules are not to touch the women of other men of honor; not to steal from other men of honor or, in general, from anyone; not to exploit prostitution; not to kill other men of honor unless strictly necessary; to avoid passing information to the police; not to quarrel with other men of honor; to maintain proper behavior; to keep silent about the Cosa Nostra around outsiders; to avoid in all circumstances introducing oneself to other men of honor (the introduction requires the presence of a third man of honor who knows both parties and who confirms membership in the Cosa Nostra by saying, "This is our friend" or "This is the same thing").

DEFINE: Cosa Nostra membership operates on a coded introduction ritual that avoids direct self-identification, sealed by a third man of honor's confirmation.

These are the ordinary rules of initiation; however, if necessary, when it is not possible to follow these criteria, it is permissible to resort to a faster initiation procedure, so long as at least three other men of honor are present, even if they belong to other families, and even if they come from another province.

QUESTION: What circumstances make the ordinary initiation criteria impossible to follow? The rules seem intentionally flexible.

Using sophisticated surveillance equipment, the FBI managed to record an initiation ritual of the Patriarca family in Medford, Massachusetts. This was the first time the ritual had been recorded.

In the work of Henner Hess, however, the subcultural system closely resembles the more useful concept of equilibrium common in economics, that is, a self-perpetuating state of affairs in which agents have an individual interest in behaving in ways which support it and have no interest in deviating from that behavior even if collectively they might attain a superior state.

DEFINE: Defines subculture via the economic concept of equilibrium — self-perpetuating because individual incentives reinforce it. XREF: Parallels game theory and collective action problems, where individually rational choices produce collectively suboptimal outcomes.

Anticompetitive outcomes can emerge without agreement among firms. A large firm, for instance, may have an interest in excluding new competitors even if rival firms share the advantages but do not share the cost. But whenever restrictive practices require the participation of all firms, an enforcing agency can provide that extra incentive for each member not to play the free rider.

XREF: Connects to collective action and free rider theory; the passage invokes Olson-style logic about why coordination needs an enforcer. DEFINE: Clarifies how the free rider problem applies to restrictive business practices and cartel enforcement.

This argument, however, is not necessarily pessimistic in its conclusions. It also suggests hypothetical conditions under which a conflict of interest between mafioso and seller might dissolve the demand for mafia services: the larger the group of unprotected potential buyers, the greater the benefits for the seller in selling high-quality goods, irrespective of protection. The seller rather than rely solely on the restricted group of buyers guaranteed by the mafioso. The mafioso's protection would therefore become redundant, as any customer would be well treated. This is a case in which the market, by imposing its own self-enforcing pressure for honesty, might disrupt the equilibrium between seller and mafioso. Something of this kind did in fact happen in the Palermo fruit and vegetable market (see Chapter 8).

XREF: Connects to market self-regulation and reputation mechanisms in economics literature (e.g., game-theoretic models of honesty without enforcement). QUESTION: What threshold of unprotected buyers makes mafia protection redundant, and does this hold beyond perishable-goods markets?

The tendency to focus more on violence than on activities such as gathering intelligence can he attributed to the fact that usually when we read about organized crime, it is in the context of violence. Snooping is less newsworthy than murder. But violent action, while crucial, is only occasionally demanded of a mafioso (although it must always be perceived as a potential threat); by contrast, knowledge and discretion are actively required at all times.

XREF: Reverses the media-inflated perception that mafia operations center on violence, echoing how other clandestine professions rely on quiet competence rather than spectacle.

The relationship between an oyabun [one having the status of a father or leader] and a kobun [one having the status of a child or subordinate] is expressed in terms of protection and service. The kobun offers absolute obedience, and in return the oyabun grants favors and offers his protection and influence

XREF: Parallels patron-client dynamics found across many societies, including mafia godfather relationships and medieval feudal bonds.

Thieves lack legal rights over what they steal; nevertheless they are able to consume it and to exclude others from it, to derive income from it, and to alienate it. Each of these capabilities is an attribute of ownership. The lack of legal rights may reduce the value of these capabilities, but it does not negate them

XREF: Connects to de facto vs. de jure power distinctions, and to debates about property as social fact versus legal construct.

There is no evidence of such separation in illegal enterprises in general. Reuter (1983) argues that this is a consequence of illegality itself (119ff.), which makes the development of a credit market extremely difficult. That is, no one is prepared to lend substantial sums of money to illegal firms because (1) they do not keep properly audited books for fear of criminal prosecution and hence cannot be monitored; (2) they cannot provide effective collateral; and (3) since loans have to be made to individuals rather than enterprises, solvency is too dependent on the fate of a single man. Credit limitations make it impossible for firms to grow, as they have to rely entirely on self-financing; and because they cannot grow, they cannot reach the size which warrants a separation of ownership and management.

That is, if M2 is weaker than M1 in "military" strength, and his inferiority is common knowledge, M2 will not intervene, or if he does, he knows he will lose. Thus, P1 would refrain from asking M2 for protection in the first place, knowing it will do him no good. This situation is effectively equivalent to one in which M 1 has a monopoly.

3. A History of Sicily (Finley et al. 1986) points out that in Sicily limited companies were formed only on a family basis and that "Sicilians themselves always preferred to insure abroad with companies which had the reputation for paying up at once without going to court" (158). Correspondingly, insurance companies expected high premiums from Sicilian merchants because they did not trust them. Usury is said to have been widespread in the whole of southern Italy before and after Unification, and to have been a major obstacle to development (Sonnino 1974: 104-110; Villari 1978: 13). Among other things, high interest rates express low trust in the ability or willingness of borrowers to repay their loans. Although little research has been done, there are signs that an oligopoly of credit sources may have existed in Sicily, as attempts to democratize credit opportunities in the 1880s met with fierce opposition, which evidently culminated with the murder in 1893 of Emanuele Notarbartolo, head of the Bank of Sicily (see Barone 1987).

Given the nature of protection, it can be argued that supply is more central to an explanation of the mafia's origins than demand, because if the latter can only encourage the former, the former can undoubtedly create the latter. Once a protection market exists, it has a self-reinforcing quality whereby demand is increased by both positive and negative externalities. As we saw in Chapter 1. it is possible to conceive of a state of affairs in which there is no protection and no demand for it either, until an element of protection creeps in and the situation changes to one in which everybody muse be protected . In order to account for the emergence of a protection market, it is not necessary in theory to postulate the presence of exogenously generated distrust and a corresponding demand for protection. The fact that endogenous explanations may be more economical, however, does not imply that they are always true.

XREF: Relates to supply-side explanations in economic theory and how markets can be self-reinforcing, echoing conversations about institutional emergence.

The standard historical view traces the origin of the camorristi to the prisons of Naples. Even recently, members of the gang known as Nuova camorra Organizzata, led by Raffaele Cutolo, were recruited among convicts. Vigilantes with "mafioso" inclinations can be found in Tanzania (see Abrahams 1987, which also mentions other examples around the world); the tendency coward private protection can be detected in the black townships of South Africa, where the law of the whites is regarded with deep suspicion, as the case of Winnie Mandela and her guerrillas shows ( Observer, February 19. 1989). Both Catholic and Protestant armed factions in Northern Ireland operate protection rackets (Listener, January 7, 1988). Jesus Alberto Molina, an eighteen-year-old murderer who fled and turned state's evidence in Colombia (Repubblica, August 31, 1989), condenses in his short life the trajectory of the Sicilian mafia over the period of a century. He belonged to an armed group employed to protect rich farmers in the Magdalena Medio region, where violence between drug dealers and leftwing guerrillas is particularly intense. Jesus soon found a more attractive outlet for his skills and was hired by drug dealers receiving training from Israeli mercenaries. Finally, he confessed to the murders of a firm manager and a trade unionist. In short, he began as a private guard employed by wealthy farmers-the equivalent of a Sicilian campiere-and went straight to work for the drug dealers.

XREF: Parallels Gambetta's private protection argument, suggesting mafia-type structures emerge wherever state protection is distrusted.

The tortuous history of the legislation involving private and public police forces is indicative of the difficulties faced by the state—whether Bourbon or Unified Italian—in enforcing law and order. In 1806, 1807, 1809, and 1819, the Gendarmeria Reale was reorganized and reshaped. In 1813 the Compagnie d' Armi, a sort of vigilante militia, was formed, followed by a municipal police force, the Sorvegliatori di Interna Sicurezza, in 1833. In 1860 the Compagnie d'Armi (also known as Milici a Cavallo) was disbanded by Garibaldi. In 1865 the new Italian government abolished all private armies and police forces. In 1866 the Milici a Cavallo were reinstated, for the Carabinieri alone had proved incapable of enforcing the law. Police prefects were also given special powers. In 1871 the Milici a Cavallo were reorganized, and three years later even more power was granted to the prefects. In 1877 the Milici a Cavallo were abolished once and for all, replaced by the Guardie di Pubblica Sicurezza. In 1887 this new police force was subjected to a disciplinary inquiry by Premier Francesco Crispi, who reshaped it in 1888. Then in 1892 the Guardie were disbanded. Finally, in 1894 "proveddimenti eccezionali di pubblica sicurezza" (extraordinary provisions for public safety) were taken, and the Sicilian provinces were put under a state of martial law during the revolt of the Fasci Siciliani.

It is far from easy to pin down exactly what is meant in the literature by a mafia of the latifundia. Even in Blok (1974), mafia and mafiosi appear in so many different guises that one is hard-pressed to provide a focused summary: the mafia is defined as "associations of armed strongmen and their followers who exercise jurisdiction on the local level in conjunction with formal authority" (p. 94), and, more briefly, as "a pragmatic dimension of the state" (p. 96). The mafia is then described as a force for the internal settlement of disputes apart from any "conjunction" with formal authority: "Mafiosi provided a code according to which various groups in Sicilian society arranged themselves in conflict and accommodation" (p. 96); the mafia "grew out of the needs of all rural classes" (p. 97). We are just about to accept the definition of mafiosi as middlemen when they appear in the guise of campieri, ruthlessly collecting extortion money (p. 152). Elsewhere we are led to believe that they are rural entrepreneurs protecting their interests by violent means, only to discover that they operate as independent semiorganized thugs who simply force landowners to keep them as guards on the land (pp. 146-152). If we return to the idea of mafiosi as gabelloti, we are then perplexed to read that it was the gabelloti themselves who had to pay protection to others (p. 146). Mafiosi protect bandits (pp. 101-102), and landowners protect bandits (p. 108), but if we conclude that landowners are mafiosi we are mistaken, for we find that mafiosi also protect landowners against peasant rebellion (p. 181). It is hardly surprising that some people turn, bewildered, to the view that the mafia does not exist (see, e.g., Duggan 1988).

XREF: Demonstrates how a scholarly concept can fragment across a single author's work — a caution for anyone relying on one definition of any contested historical phenomenon.

The identification between mafiosi and gabelloti generates the syllogism which underlies this view: given that gabelloti are mafiosi and that gabelloti are notorious exploiters of peasants, therefore mafiosi must be the same. Only the second of the two premises is empirically warranted, however.

DEFINE: Distinguishes gabelloti (land managers who exploited peasants) from mafiosi, clarifying they are separate groups conflated in a common syllogism.

The view that the two groups coincided is of uncertain origin. During the early Fascist era it seems to have become predominant: according to Duggan (1988: 78), the representation of the gabelloti and their armed men as the embodiment of the mafia, and the fact that they became the prime target of the energetic action of Cesare Mori, Mussolini's prefect in Sicily from 1925 to 1929, may have been the result of simple political expediency.

XREF: Connects to the broader historiography of Italian Fascism using the mafia as a political target.

25. In Sicily in 1921 there were 17.7 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants, as opposed to 7.3 in the whole of Italy (in itself a high murder rate) and in contrast to Sicily's own figures of 7.7 ten years earlier (1911) and 3.6 ten years later (1931).

26. Similarly, in the United States organized crime managed to infiltrate the waterfront unions only on the East Coast, where there were no traces of political radicalism. When racketeers tried to penetrate the West Coast unions, they were thrown out by the Red Guards of Harry Bridges (Kimeldorf 1988: 122ff.).

XREF: Connects to broader literature on how leftist/labor militancy historically defended against racketeering, relevant to comparative criminology and labor history.

28. Several early mafiosi describe their status as having been accidentally acquired through a reputation for protecting people, mediating transactions, and settling disputes, as in Ardena's story (see Hess 1973 for excellent examples).

XREF: Connects to discussions about how social capital and reputation-building generate institutional power, relevant to organizational legitimacy theories.

30. Contiguity does not necessarily imply that people moved only from the country to the cities in order to supply protection where profit opportunities were greater, as is often maintained (see, e.g., Ciuni 1977). Some observers have suggested the opposite, claiming that criminal associations spread from the coast inland (Alongi 1977; Lupo 1988: 474).

XREF: Challenges the common urban-migration narrative of organized crime growth, which parallels broader debates about rural-to-urban criminal movement versus coastal-to-inland diffusion.

3. Lestingi anticipated the thesis put forward a century later by Henner Hess. Hess, perhaps unaware of the points of similarity, does not acknowledge Lestingi and even includes him among other early writers who misinterpreted the phenomenon (1973: 96). Lestingi argued that mafiosi recognize one another not because they belong to the same organization but because, quoting Tullio, "pares cum paribus facillime congregantur": "The man who shares with another the same habits, inclinations, and goals in life, finds himself naturally tied to him even when no apparent bond, no relationship, not even a previous acquaintance exists. At certain moments they are like two friends who have known each other for a long time and who, with great good will, exchange services and direct their thoughts and deeds toward a common aim" (1880: 292).

6. A rigid belief in the mafia as a corporate entity, organized and centralized, carries, as Hess (1973) puts it, "dangerous" connotations. It eases pressure on the police, lightening the task of "identifying" perpetrators and excusing failures of detection. It also drastically redistributes the blame for a socially disagreeable state by dividing the world neatly into mafia members—a dreadful lot—and the rest of us, nice human beings by default. This is a serious misapprehension, for even if the mafia had an organized core, it would still differ from other criminal groups precisely by virtue of its social ramifications (Franchetti 1974: 100), and the number and variety of customers it serves.

DEFINE: Reframes the mafia from a centralized criminal corporation into a diffuse social phenomenon defined by its customer relationships and social ramification.

7. A 1990 Carabinieri report differed slightly (Epoca, October 3, 1990). It lists 48 families in Palermo, both the city and the province, instead of 46; 38 in Agrigento instead of 36; 21 in Trapani instead of 14; 6 in Caltanisetta instead of 5; and 4 in Catania. This report also provides an estimate for Enna, a remote province in the interior, of 12 families, and identifies a few even in the provinces traditionally considered untouched by the mafia: 3 in Messina, 3 in Siracusa, and 7 in Ragusa. From the testimonies of the pentiti we know that these last groups are either subsidiaries of families based in other provinces or racketeers operating independently of mafia cartels.

8. I prefer the median to the mean for the median is a more robust measure, less sensitive to unusual values at the extremes of the distribution (see Marsh 1988: 29-30).

17. A similar meaning could be attached to other statements by mafiosi, such as this by Salvatore Contorno: "Pietro Marchese was commonly regarded as a man of honor from Corso dei Mille, but he actually belonged to Ciaculli," an area controlled by the more powerful Greco family (TC: 8).

DEFINE: Explains how mafia statements encode hierarchical territorial control—where a man 'actually belonged' reveals the dominant family's power structure.

18. In the Japanese yakuza, "when a follower reaches a certain status in the hierarchy, he is given permission to train his own followers and become a small boss. He announces the name of his own family and, in accordance with his prestige, he is permitted to call himself either the boss of 'a branch family' or the boss of a 'whole family' "; also "weaker bosses of less powerful families are constantly searching for opportunities to join in alliances with the more powerful bosses in order to secure the safety and raise the status and power of their families" (Iwai 1986: 217-218).

XREF: Connects to general organizational theory about hierarchy, sponsorship, and patronage networks — similar dynamics exist in corporate and criminal organizations alike.

22. Antonino Calderone describes a meeting in which positions in the family were decided by only a few members (not by the whole family, as other pentiti report) in a way that suggests elections were irrelevant (AC: I, 245).

XREF: Contradictory 'pentiti' testimony about whether elections involved the whole family vs. a few members — worth tracking across sources.

23. In 1975 Stefano Bontade was unanimously appointed capo by eleven men of honor. By 1979, however, his family, possibly as a result of internalizing customers dealing in drugs, had grown rapidly to over one hundred members and new elections had to be held to reaffirm Bontade's supremacy. He was reappointed, but not unanimously. He forgave the dissidents, and this perceived sign of weakness probably played a part in his subsequent death, as that splinter group apparently betrayed him and joined forces with a hostile faction in the coalition.

XREF: Connects to organizational theory about rapid scaling undermining informal authority structures and internal cohesion.

24. The term is mentioned as early as Lestingi (1884) (see also Lombroso 1889: 581, n. 1) to describe the organization of the Fratellanza of Girgenti (now Agrigento). Melchiorre Allegra, in his 1937 testimony, spoke of a "capo della decina."

30. Judge Terranova did not believe that the existence of a commissione meant that the mafia was a tightly unified structure (CPM: 4-xvii, 656). Of the original members of the commissione, five were still active mafiosi at the end of the 1970s: Stefano Bontade, Gaetano Badalamenti, Salvatore Greco ("Cicchireddu"), Pino Panno, and Antonino Salamone. Badalamenti and Salamone were still alive as of this writing.

36. Two anecdotal accounts exist of the origins of the commissione. A 1963 police report claims that it was prompted by the formation of the antimafia parliamentary commission early in that decade. The testimony of mafiosi denies such causation, countering that the commissione predates the parliamentary commission (TB: II, 27). The mafiosi maintain that the idea of a commissione came from their smarter American cousins, who had long made successful use of such a scheme. Charles ("Lucky") Luciano and Joe Bonanno are both said to have been responsible for making the suggestion during a visit to Sicily in 1957, and in particular at a meeting at the Hotel delle Palme in Palermo (CPM: 4-xiv, 1087ff.). Bonanno did indeed travel to Sicily in that period. In his autobiography he observes that, unlike in the United States, no such committee had previously existed in Sicily; but he says nothing about his possible role in its inauguration (1983: 159). Nor does Luciano in the biography he inspired, although he too was in Italy for a while in the 1950s.

Car theft is no laughing matter for the mafia. How, after all, can a mafioso signal that his car alone is untouchable among a thousand others? Were he to resort to a warning label, say with an M on it, so could anyone else. If he were to display somewhere on the vehicle his (less easily pirated) surname or his even more resonant nickname, he would forfeit the advantages of anonymity. One solution might be for him to leave the car unlocked, relying on the fact that in high-crime areas this would signify an intimidating lack of fear (Calzetta says that his boss left his car unlocked). A more extreme alternative is to drive a small, unassuming car, which is less likely to attract thieves; and indeed many mafiosi do own such cars. But perhaps the most theatrical solution is to buy a flashy foreign car—a black BMW, cream Mercedes, or red Range Rover (all real examples)—which transmits an unequivocal message to the thief. This gambit accounts for a notorious preference among mafiosi for showy cars, which is usually attributed only to the desire to impress.

XREF: Relates to signalling theory and costly signalling, the same logic behind conspicuous consumption and deterrent displays in economics and biology.

Buscetta says he was expelled (posato) from the mafia because he was divorced and had had extramarital relationships. He adds that, "although one is forbidden even to speak to the man of honor who has been expelled, it can happen that, if he is considered an important person and if the expulsion is considered excessive, the other men of honor may take the personal responsibility of continuing to deal with him as if nothing had happened" (TB: III, 43).

DEFINE: Explains 'posato' — the practice of expelling a man of honor from the mafia — and the loophole where influential expelled members can still be dealt with.

Buscetta also remarked: "In my time it was absolutely forbidden to escape from prison; this was because of solidarity toward the other inmates, who would inevitably have suffered a harshening of prison conditions as a result of the escape" (TB: I, 10).

Introductions are a similarly serious business in the Japanese yakuza, which has its own "unique forms of greeting and identification... When two yakuza meet for the first time, each of them will take up a pose. Stepping forward slightly, bending his legs, putting his clenched fist on the right femur, and stretching out his left arm each will recite at length his place of origin, present residence, the name of his oyabun, and his own name in stilted archaic language. When he has finished, the same type of greeting is repeated by the other party" (Iwai 1986: 223). This practice derives from the artisans of feudal Japan; that does not mean, however, that these formal procedures can be dismissed as a "residue of past customs," as the author asserts.

XREF: Relates to rituals of identity and group belonging — parallels organizational initiation and formalized greeting practices across cultures.

A few recorded cases seem to transgress the rule against poaching: Salvatore Montalto, for instance, was appointed reggente of the Villa bate family although he had originally belonged to the family of Passo di Rigano; Salvatore Inzerillo succeeded his uncle, Don Tano Di Maggio (who "stood aside spontaneously"), as head of the family of Passo di Rigano although he had previously been a member of the neigh boring firm of Uditore (TB: I, 85, 126; TC: 8). But these examples involve leaders rather than ordinary members, and are therefore cases of subcontracting and succession rather than change of supplier. The rule against poaching also exists in Oxbridge colleges.

XREF: The author's comparison to Oxbridge colleges suggests a fascinating parallel between organized crime and elite academic institutions, worth probing.

According to Buscetta: "It has never happened that a man of honor has gone to the boss of his family to inform him that he no longer wanes to belong to the Cosa Nostra. Circumstances can, for example, take the man of honor away from Sicily so that he is not used actively in the family's affairs; but at any time, and wherever he is, they may remember him and ask him to act in a way consistent with his being a man of honor, and he cannot refuse" (TB: III, 139).

DEFINE: Clarifies the Cosa Nostra's defining rule: membership is irrevocable and lifelong, even for men who relocate.

Once again the question arises as to why some scholars cannot reason about mafiosi in the same terms they would apply to other groups. One possible explanation evokes the difficulty we have in believing that somebody else believes something that strikes us as ludicrous, for fear of making ourselves appear equally ludicrous. Thus, believing char mafiosi undergo a seemingly ridiculous ritual could make one seem equally ridiculous. But why should this fear arise only in the case of criminals when some people seem far less reluctant to believe, for instance, that there are others who practice black magic? Could it be that by sneering at such activities we ultimately reveal a dichotomous view of the criminal as either a hopelessly brutish creature with no symbolic life or a mythically powerful genius who could not possibly stoop so low as to deal in childish symbols other than for purely instrumental reasons?

QUESTION: Why would belief in black magic be more credible to scholars than belief in mafioso rituals? This asymmetry itself is worth investigating.

Even if that content simply consists of yet more names: had the newspaper Repubblica lost all its "name" reporters as a result of a threatened takeover in early 1990, it might itself have become a worthless name. Property rights to the name of a magazine such as The Economist, in which articles are traditionally unsigned, can he more easily enforced.

The challenge posed by this hypothesis, however, is to explain the degree of difference. Why do individual families in the mafia adopt the same ritual rather than carrying differentiation one step further? Or why does a certain ritual not transcend a given geographic area?

9. Another lender, who was owed 1.2 billion lire, suffered a similar fate: he was persuaded to buy land from the debtor for a sum of 1.4 billion, which meant he had to pay an additional 200 million lire over what he was owed. The land was worth only about half that price (OSAG: 480-481).

Sophisticated methods have been developed for checking whether voters stood by their declared intentions. Until the referendum of June 9, 1991, abolished this system, Italian voters could express up to four preferences among the candidates on any party slate. These votes could be cast by writing in either the candidate's name or the corresponding number, since numbers are easier to memorize. Thus, voters wishing to sell their vote were instructed to select particular numbers and list them in a particular sequence. Checking the constituency list against the key sequence made accurate identification possible. Votes were usually sold in blocks by middlemen known as capibastone.

XREF: Relates to electoral integrity literature and how secret-ballot systems historically failed to prevent corruption.

Enzo Leone, a socialist candidate from Marsala, no doubt regretted having paid in advance. In a recorded telephone conversation with one of his capibastone after the 1990 elections, he complains: "They are thieves; they betrayed us. First we gave them the money, but then they did not give us the promised votes" (Repubblica, October 26, 1991).

XREF: Relates to electoral corruption and mafia-political collusion, a recurring theme in studies of Sicilian politics.

An inside accomplice at the post office was spared "on the promise not to work again for persons who were outside the cosche" possibly on the assumption that he might prove useful next time (VS: I, 125). The duplicitous attitude toward crime is further exemplified in Leonardo Vitale's testimony, which predates the period when abduction was outlawed: "I remember that Calò [in 1972] proposed that we should kidnap [Vito] Ciancimino's son in Baida... As the suggestion came from Calò, it was to be expected that, given their relationship, Ciancimino would then turn to Riina and [Calò] would be in a position to mediate, in reality backing our interests" (OSPA: V, 735).

XREF: Connects to other readings on organized crime strategy and corruption networks in Italy.

Economists may wonder why the new challenger demands more money rather than less, whereas the usual strategy for entering a monopoly market is to undercut prices. In the case of protection, however, cheaper services and more refined manners would not produce the desired effect, for the fear of retaliation would keep customers loyal to their established supplier. Thus, the challenger must first raise the extramonetary cost of remaining loyal to the old mafioso rather than emphasizing the benefits of switching suppliers. By doing so and getting away with it, he shows both that he is to be feared more than his rival and that he can supply better protection (see also Chapter 2).

As this rather old case (Hess 1973) suggests, territorial licensing can affect markets of all sorts: "In 1913 a doctor A from Palermo settled in Caltanisetta and there set up a practice. However, several months passed without a single patient X calling on his services. He thereupon went to Palermo and asked a friend B, a senior civil servant, to help him. The civil servant listened to his story and then got on to butcher C, whom he knew. The [Butcher] wrote on a piece of paper: il dottor... è mio amico [the doctor is my friend], signed the sentence and sent the doctor to another butcher D in Caltanisetta to hand over his message. This the doctor did and from that moment his difficulties were over" (p. 138).

XREF: Connects to work on informal institutions, social capital (Putnam), and trust-based market coordination versus formal licensing regimes.

An interesting case of confusion is reported in Arlacchi (1983: 178) with reference to Calabria. Despite regular payments to a local mafia family, a building contractor was still subjected to violent threats. It turned out that he had wrongly assumed that mafia territories and local council jurisdictions coincided and was therefore paying the wrong family. The same error was committed, according to Judge Falcone, by Pino Aurelio in 1989. He was informed of his mistake in the usual allusive language: "If one wants to build, one needs an architect; if one is ill, he sees a doctor" (Falcone and Padovani 1991: 42).

XREF: Relates to the distinction between formal state governance and informal/parallel power structures operating in the same geographic space.

An alternative account of this multiple murder was supplied by Piera Lo Verso. Her husband, who was among those killed, had stopped buying horses through a dealer protected by the Catania family and had gone straight to the supplier in Apulia (L'Ora and Giornale di Sicilia, October 22, 1986; Puglisi 1990: 89ff.).

XREF: Connects to patterns of mafia economic control and extralegal violence as social enforcement mechanisms.

A police report referring to the early 1960s published in the files of the antimafia commission cites a figure of 139 commissionari. This number, however, includes the employees of commissionari and not just the licensed dealers. See Santino and La Fiura (1990: 402) for a mistaken reading of these statistics.

XREF: This may connect to the reader's understanding of organized crime's legitimate-business penetration in Sicily, or to earlier statistical claims in the source.

This argument is analogous to the one which holds that widespread corruption is self-generating: the expectation suffices to produce more of the thing itself (Andvig and Moene 1990).

XREF: Self-fulfilling prophecy dynamics echo Merton's concept and relate to how expectations shape social realities.

Cooperation among drivers is based not only on the fact that everyone contributes to costs. If taxis are too few, the average waiting time for customers increases; if, in addition, the meter starts running when the call is taken, the average fare is also higher, possibly so high that the customers will no longer choose to call a taxi. Thus, the taxi market, even though it consists of self-employed drivers competing with one another for customers, is a case of everyone wanting more rather than fewer competitors, up to a point, lest the market simply cease to exist.

XREF: Relates to concepts of network effects and the public-good character of a functioning marketplace, echoing work on why competitors sometimes coordinate.

"Not being a member you gotta get permission. Anything you do, they give you a share, you don't give them a share" (Abadinsky 1983: 119).

There is evidence that from 1951 to 1954 the French intelligence agency ran an opium distribution network to finance the hiring of mercenaries in the Indochina war (Posner 1989).

XREF: Connects to Cold War covert operations and state-sponsored drug trafficking histories, such as CIA involvement in the Golden Triangle.

In 1971 President Richard Nixon declared heroin "public enemy number one" (although in 1973 the CIA was apparently still flying opium from Laos to South Vietnam; Posner 1989). American soldiers returning from Vietnam brought the habit back, and it spread. Data from the Internal Revenue Service confirm that drug consumption in the United States more than doubled between 1973 and 1982 (Santino 1988).

XREF: Connects to broader counterculture and Vietnam War histories where returning veterans spread drug habits.

When nine candidates were killed before the local elections in Naples and Calabria in May 1990, Judge Giovanni Falcone, commenting on the fact that nothing of the sore had happened in Sicily, said: "Have you ever asked yourself why it is that in Sicily everything is quiet? This is the most eloquent proof, in its silence, in its uniqueness, of [the mafia] organization. Whereas the camorra and the 'ndrangheta, which do not have a common organization, fight against each other, the Cosa Nostra is a unified, organic structure, in which it is possible to find a standard of conduct adhered to by everyone" (Repubblica, May 11, 1990).

XREF: Connects to Falcone's broader argument that the mafia's strength lies in being a single, hierarchical structure unlike the fragmented camorra and 'ndrangheta.

Not all important mafioso funerals are so popular, however. Stefano Bontade's murder in Palermo on his forty-fifth birthday in 1981 was a sign that all-out war was imminent. Despite the considerable weight this man carried in the mafia and the fact that, as Salvatore Contorno points out, "it was reasonable to expect an extremely large participation in mourning," very few people attended his funeral (TC: 26). The fear of being targeted as a friend of the victim's probably prevailed.

QUESTION: How does attendance at funerals function as a strategic signal within Mafia networks — both for showing loyalty and avoiding suspicion?

10. The only independent mafia family outside Sicily, according to Calderone, was for a time in Tunis; it consisted of expatriate mafiosi who had fled the fascist police (AC: I, 64-74, 97, 316; Arlacchi 1992: 15-16). This family was mentioned also by Melchiorre Allegra in his 1937 testimony (MA-L'Ora, January 24-25, 1962).

QUESTION: How long did this Tunis mafia family remain independent, and what happened to it?