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.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 522