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.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 267