Unfortunately for Sicilians, members of the Italian Mafia themselves engaged in the promotion and selective exploitation of distrust. In this, they mirrored the devices of the Spanish overlords of southern Italy in the seventeenth century (Gambetta 1988, 159). Whereas the Spanish merely suppressed Sicily, the Mafia were parasites who exploited Sicilians. The Mafia system survived changing governments into the twentieth century for at least two reasons. First, out-migration of those hostile to the Mafia left less opposition to it. Second, in the early, weak days of democracy, participants in the political system dragged the Mafia into politics as an ally.

XREF: Connects to discussions of how criminal organizations entrench themselves as parasitic alternatives to weak state institutions.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 497