VIOLENT SOCIAL

REGULATION : ORGANIZED
CRIME IN THE ITALIAN SOUTH
RAIMONDO CATANZARO

University of Trento, Italy

INTRODUCTION

HE LAST decade has seen growing alarm in Italy over the increase in
t illegal activities. Inspection of the figures for reported offences subject to
-~. criminal proceedings reveals a rise in homicides - especially in the three or
four Italian regions with the highest rates of organized crime (Sicily, Calabria,
Campania and, in recent years, Puglia) - and also an increase in larceny,
embezzlement and crimes against the state. The addresses delivered by the
district heads of the Italian magistracy to mark the opening of the judicial year
paint an increasingly gloomy picture.
In 1992, moreover, the assassinations in Palermo of leading politicians
(notably the European parliamentary deputy, Lima) and magistrates like Falcone
and Borsellino, leaders of the fight against the Mafia, increased preoccupation
over the damage that the presence of criminal groups could wreak in Italy and

Europe.
In this article, I shall analyse the consequences of organized crime for the
economy and politics of the Italian Mezzogiorno. To do so, I shall have to cla-
rify the nature and the concrete patterns assumed by the form of organized
crime with the longest tradition and the deepest geographical roots: the Sicilian
Mafia.

SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),
Vol. 3 (1994), 267
267-279
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THE TWO FACES OF CRIME

The debate in progress for a number of years in Italy, first on the Mafia and then,
prompted by American studies, on organized crime, has tended to confuse the
two principal activities of criminal groups. These are activities, however, that
should be kept analytically distinct, both in order to understand how they
function and in order to make adequate assessment of their dangers.
The nature and features of these two activities can be illustrated by an example
which relates to drug trafficking (but which is equally valid for any kind of illegal
commerce). A criminal group intending to bring a quantity of heroin or cocaine
into the country through a maritime port or an airport must obtain assent from
the group which controls illegal activities in that area. Discovery of the traffic
may in fact cause problems for the group controlling the port, which may take
revenge on the traffickers by passing their names to the police, by impeding their
further trafficking or even by killing some of them. Assent by the group
controlling the port of entry instead guarantees the traffickers against these risks.
Moreover, the controlling group knows which are the safest places and methods
for transporting the goods, and can count on the help of benevolent, co-operative
or even corrupt police officials.
It is therefore in the traffickers’ interest to inform the group in control of the
area of its intentions and to obtain its assent - which they usually repay with a cut
out of the profits. The traffickers see this payment as providing insurance against
a twofold risk: that of being discovered by the police, and that of being
discovered by the group in control of the area. The local controllers interpret it in
two ways: first as payment for a service rendered and for costs incurred

(including payouts to the police), and second as a kind of monetization of the risk
arising from the fact that an increased volume of illegal traffic may surpass the
threshold deemed acceptable by the police and induce them to intervene, thereby
causing general turmoil in local criminal activities.
Let us examine the features of these two groups. The first of them, the group
which organizes the drug traffic, can be viewed as an economic entrepreneur who
produces and/or distributes a commodity - albeit a commodity whose
production and distribution is prohibited by law. The second group is altogether
different in character: it operates as a political entrepreneur who controls a
territory and exacts tribute for all business dealings within it.
We must therefore distinguish between illicit economic activities (drug
trafficking, smuggling, organized prostitution, gambling, illegal lotteries), on the
one hand, and politico-military control of a geographical area on the other.
This distinction has been perhaps most effectively drawn in the concepts of
’enterprise syndicate’ and ’power syndicate’ (Block, 1980). It is a distinction of
crucial importance because the activities performed in the two fields follow
diametrically opposing logics. Illicit economic activities are governed by market
criteria, although this is the wholly specific market of the production and
distribution of goods which must circulate clandestinely to avoid the sanctions of
the law. It is a phenomenon which has prompted some authors to contrast the
conventional notion of organized crime with that of ’disorganized crime’
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(Reuter, 1983). Although the concept of disorganized crime as the mere anarchy
of market behaviours seems principally to respond to the pattern of an ideal type,
there is no doubt that in these sectors, although they may comprise cartels set up
to control the market, the essential principle that regulates actors’ behaviour is

competition.
Conversely, the power syndicate - whose most evident activities in the context
of the organized crime of Southern Italy are extortion and kidnapping - provides
a classic example of political specialization. The overriding aim of the power

syndicate is to gain control over the environment and over the people that are
part of it; in this respect, indeed, mafiosi have been called ’power brokers’ (Blok,
1974).

THE ENTREPRENEURS OF VIOLENT PROTECTION

One of the chief activities of criminal power brokers is the extortion of money in
exchange for protection. Analysis of the mechanism of extortion, therefore, can
enable us to understand the system whereby control is exerted over individuals
and the environment.
Extortion differs from crimes such as theft or robbery in that it is continuous
or protracted (kidnapping for the purpose of extortion is also prolonged over

time, but it ceases when the victim is released). What interests me here, however,
is not the legal aspects of such continuousness but its social ones. Since extortion
does not consist of a single act, it entails a continuing relationship with the victims
who, together with their social networks, therefore require constant manipu-
lation. And the law and its enforcers must likewise be manipulated (Schneider
and Schneider, 1976). The mafioso, in fact, must simultaneously both threaten
and protect his victim; he must, therefore, be able to wield effective power over
those who seek to interfere in this relationship, whether these are other criminals
or the public authorities. In other words, the mafioso must know how to exploit
his strategic position in a number of social networks to the maximum.
Ultimately, however, the basis of the protector-extorter’s capacity for protection
-

and therefore for extortion - is the potential violence that he is capable of

unleashing. We may therefore define the subjects of organized crime qua power
brokers or a power syndicate as subjects specializing in the supply of private
protection, the financing of which is based on extorted services which take the
form of fixed and regular payments in exchange for the rendering of services,
fundamental among which is providing a guarantee of safety (Weber, 1947).
These, therefore, are subjects who compete with the state, or who supply a good
that the state is unable to provide.
What conditions must be satisfied for protection to be provided? If those who
specialize in these activities wish to replace the authority of the state as guarantors
of people’s property or physical safety, they must be able to demonstrate an
ability to exercise force more effectively than their potential competitors. They
must therefore build their own apparatus of physical coercion, and they must
monopolize violence within a particular territory.
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However, if the exerciser of violence effectively achieves monopoly, demands

for protection directed to private subjects will cease, and the mafioso will
therefore not be able to exact kickbacks or ad hoc payments for him to dispense
such protection. In fact, a private subject who manages to achieve monopoly
over violence in a specific territory eventually becomes a public actor. In other

words, those who monopolize violence must supply protection as a public good,
that is without the payment of a direct quid pro quo.
Unlike the state, which supplies protection as a public good to all citizens,
organized crime is instead an entrepreneur of protection. One of the chief aims of
an entrepreneur is to sustain demand for the commodity he supplies. And just as

companies advertise their products, so do mafiosi resort to publicity. They must

ensure that violence is constantly present on the market, that is, that demand for

protection never falls off. And for this purpose they use their ability to exercise
violence: they threaten people’s physical safety or property, at the same time
protecting them against this threat in exchange for kickbacks, tribute or other
forms of payment. The private entrepreneurs of protection must therefore
simultaneously be entrepreneurs of violence. For their supply of protection to be
effective and attractive, there must be an ever-present demand for private
protection. There must, that is, exist a subject, the state, which on paper holds the
monopoly of legitimate violence, but which is unable to exercise it efficiently and
is therefore unable to protect its citizens.
This explains, among other things, why organized crime is not an anti-state,
and why it can only prosper when a state exists but is ineffectual. In fact, it is only
when there exists a mechanism of public protection unable to function properly
that the conditions for private protection can arise. The rise of the Mafia in Sicily
during the building of the Italian nation-state provides clear confirmation of this
(Catanzaro, 1992). Conversely, if public protection does not exist even on paper,
then mechanisms are triggered that in the long term induce citizens to choose
among the various private subjects competing to provide them with protection,
until one of these emerges as the agent able to offer protection as a public good.
Historically, this has been the process whereby public authority in nation-states
has formed.
From this point of view, therefore, mafiosi are entrepreneurs of violent
protection. The element of violence should be stressed because it is the ultimate
basis of the Mafia’s power of protection. However, a recent study (Gambetta,
1992) regards violence as being of relatively minor importance, and instead
proposes a definition of mafiosi as guarantors of trust. Under this view, the
distinguishing feature of the history of Sicily has been the endemic distrust
engendered by the Spanish domination of the island. This distrust created a
demand for guarantees on transactions that ensured the reliability of the seller,
the buyer or both. This demand then created further demand for the protection
of transactions which led to the rise of an ’industry of private protection’, as
Franchetti (1974) called it.
But the key issue is the following: is it demand for guarantees on transactions
deriving from an endemic lack of trust that stimulates the supply of protection,
or, vice versa, is it the supply of protection that creates the demand?
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Competition among mafiosi centres on their ability to supply the specific

commodity of protection, with the potential for violence intrinsic to it. Once the
mafioso has become the monopolistic supplier of protection for a certain number
of clients, he not only has a reputation to defend - which would be damaged if he
began to lose customers - but he also has a twofold role to fulfil: first he is the
head of a ’family’ (that is a criminal group), and second he holds jurisdiction over
a territory. Those who challenge his ability to provide protection also challenge
these two powers, over people and over the territory. For this reason, the
continuity of protection is essentially a strong supply-side requirement. The
’client’ is interested in the continuity of the service only as regards this specific
configuration (reputational, positional and territorial) of the supply of protec-
tion. Similarly, the client, that is the person seeking protection, is vitally
concerned that the equilibrium in the relationships among different Mafia
families should persist, since this ensures the continuity of the ’insurance
contract’. In fact, the relationship that arises between business people and their
Mafia protectors resembles, albeit abnormally, an insurance contract. The
abnormality lies in the fact that the source of risk is in this case the insurer
himself.
Gambetta (1992) also adopts this view, but he does not believe that
abnormality is involved - the reason being, he argues, that the protection
provided by the mafioso is effective and does not involve extortion. However,
nothing can be done on the demand side to ensure that this state of continuity
will come about: any change in the equilibrium conditions depends entirely on
how the supplier behaves. When potentially new suppliers of protection appear
on the scene, both internally to the family when its head is challenged by

usurpers, and externally when one family seeks to appropriate quotas of

protection belonging to another, the protected are powerless to prevent this from
occurring; nor can they favour one group rather than another. Thus the endemic
distrust stems mainly from the forms taken by the competition among those who
offer protection; and this, once again, is because of a particular combination of
protection, violence, reputation and position.
The problem of endemic distrust should also be considered in relation to the
effectiveness of the protection. According to Gambetta, the protection provided
by mafiosi is effective; it does not, as other analysts have argued, constitute
extortion. Gambetta rebuts the view that tradespeople pay off the Mafia purely
in order to stay in business, and that this is what constitutes the extortion. He
contends that the price paid by the tradesperson for protection is recompense for
an effective service rendered, if it prevents some other tradesperson from entering

his or her market. What for the latter is extortion is, for the protected
tradesperson, the rendering of an effective service. However, there are flaws in
this argument. If a businessperson trying to enter a protected market gives up the
attempt because the price of protection is too high, then no extortion exists. But if
the protected market is entered, then extortion exists both for the entrant and for
those already receiving protection - who have paid but are not guaranteed against
competition. The point is that we must define the behaviour of the mafiosi
towards the protected. According to Gambetta (1992), when mafiosi face
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uncertain and short-term prospects (for example, when the basis of a group’s
power of protection is weak and subject to competition), there is nothing to stop
them from stripping those they protect. In this case, however, there is no reason
why the mafiosi should not allow all external competitors who wish to do so
from entering a market, provided they pay the price of protection. If, instead, the
prospects are certain and long term, what is there to stop those offering
protection from acquiring new clients, given that they have no competitors?
This point has been made in very graphic terms by the well-known
’supergrass’ A. Calderone, in his description of organized crime in Catania and
Palermo.

In Catania the Mafia never went in for wholesale extortions.... But then the great
change came. Terrible guys took over. Faceless people, who organized themselves
into groups and telephoned shops demanding apizzo [payment for protection]....
There was a different extortion system in Palermo. Everyone paid the pizzo, even
the small shop-owners.... It happened ... that the bars and shops were controlled
by a certain ’man of honour’, who was worse in extracting the pizzo than a tax
inspector. In exchange he provided protection against gangs of small-time
criminals. But thzs was insurance against a danger more imaginary than real. The
gangs of hoodlums did exist ... in Palermo too, but they seldom went in for
extortion because any attempt was killed before it was bom or just after it was born.
(Arlacchi, 1992: 144-5; emphases added)
The extortion-based character of protection, associated with the violence
inherent to it, may therefore provide a better explanation of endemic distrust
than the alleged damage caused by Spanish domination. The rise of the Mafia
seems to have been due less to a lack of trust which created demand for

protection, than to a violent supply of protection which created instability and

therefore demand for trust.
This is not to imply, though, that the Mafia renders no services at all. Once the
protector/protected relationship has been established, it is in the interest of the
mafioso, precisely because of the reputational and positional nature of his role, to
prevent competitors from stealing his clients. So if competitors seek to set up as
the protectors of his clients, by threatening their property or personal safety, it is
in the mafioso’s interest to provide his clients with effective protection - precisely
in order to preserve his monopoly of protection over a specific territory and a
specific sector of business.

VIOLENT REGULATION AND TRUST

I have defined organized crime groups that take the specialized form of power
syndicates ’entrepreneurs of protection-extortion’. In other words, they are
as

specialists in the violent manipulation of people and environments. Because they

assume control over a territory, they are groups and actors who specialize in
violent social regulation.
Let us return for a moment to the example illustrating the relationships
between the two types of criminal group with which I began this article. The
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example shows that the members of the power syndicate exact tribute not only
from honest citizens, but from other criminals as well. Just as the growth of
economic activities in legal markets requires increasingly complex forms of
regulation, so the growth of illegal economic activities increases organized
crime’s demand for government. This demand is responsible for the growth of
the power syndicates, that is, of groups specializing in violent social regulation.
As the sphere of illegal activities grows, therefore, the power syndicates increase
in numbers and expand their spheres of influence; this consequently entails an
increase in the forms, extension and quantity of social regulation based on
violence.
If we are to understand this growth fully, more detailed analysis is required of
the functions associated with Mafia power syndicates. As I have said, these
functions are essentially two in number: the entrepreneurial function of
supplying violent protection, and the social function of mediating or brokering
power. The mediation function can only be performed by those who occupy
crucial positions in social networks. Competition among would-be power
brokers therefore involves conquest of the most important nodes in interper-
sonal networks, by establishing personal contacts, exchanges, friendship and
business relationships. But when in the world of crime the moment of
showdown comes, the most effective way to defeat the competition is by
physically eliminating one’s adversaries. Recurrent homicides create substantial
and continuous instability in social relationships. And this instability means that
no one - not the victims of extortion, nor the specialists of protection nor simple
onlookers - can take trust for granted. Violence is therefore seen as a constantly
possible and essentially routine option.
The everyday presence of violence prevents impersonal and affectively neutral
trust relationships from forming. Where violence is paramount, interpersonal
ties must necessarily be strong, intense and affectively connoted. It has been
stressed, in fact, that in the Italian Mezzogiorno, in Sicily in particular, friendship
takes on an instrumental connotation (Schneider and Schneider, 1976). Calling
someone from whom one is socially entitled to ask a favour a ’friend’ - whether
this favour is a service to which one is rightfully entitled or the violation of a state
law - indicates the need to attribute an interpersonal fiduciary character to social
relations, because it is impossible to trust ’spontaneously’, relying on the
operation of impersonal norms.
Can one say that this type of trust connotes strong ties rather than weak ones
(see Granovetter, 1973)? Certainly one can, but like all ties with a strong affective
connotation these are basically fragile. Generally speaking, trust is not given once
and for all, and it may even transform itself into distrust; and the more so, the
more it is affectively connoted. Affective ties, in fact, tend to be exclusive, so that
the trust they generate tends to concentrate within small groups without being
diffused in society. In the case of the illegal activities of organized crime, this
restricted character of trust networks is accentuated by the need to ensure that
such activities escape detection. Now, the characteristic feature of trust connoted
in affective and not impersonal terms is that failure to respect one’s obligations
tends to be viewed as ’betrayal’. This explains why, in the world of organized
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crime, respecting one’s obligations is strongly associated with ’honour’, so that

failure to meet these obligations is taken as a personal offence.
In a context of interpersonal relations such as the one I have described, every
alteration of social networks tends to assume dramatic and highly personalized
significance. Not only does trust abruptly change into distrust, but violence is
regarded as an appropriate response to ’betrayal’, that is, to a breach of
obligations.
We may therefore conclude that the growth of violent social regulation is a
function of the growth of illegal trafficking. But what factors affect the growth of
the latter? And is there a direct relation between the growth of illegal trafficking
and the growth of violent social regulation? Or should we assume that there are
variables which intervene to render this relationship non-linear? In answering
these questions I shall consider two points. The first relates to the consequences
of illegal activities on the market and on entrepreneurial behaviour. The second
concerns the action of the state, and with reference to two aspects in particular: a
normative aspect, and an administrative-executive one.
’I<

’ > < THE VIOLENT HAND ON THE MARKET

The entrepreneurial skills that develop in the field of illegal activities are highly
specific. Specialization in recycling, running drugs couriers and handling
contacts with bankers and financiers in order to launder dirty money creates

entrepreneurial skills, understood as the ability to identify the most profitable

sectors to invest in. But these are skills which cannot be used to create businesses
with productive functions, except for the limited purposes of establishing links
with the supply of illegal goods and of exploiting financial and political
connections in order to acquire public financing and contracts.
Hence managerial skills are formed essentially in relation to politics, the role of
which is excessively ’dramatized’ (Trigilia, 1992). Cash is not used to stimulate
economic development, but is directed towards other activities. Not only does
capital not accumulate in ’suitable hands’ (Gerschenkron, 1962), but the social
conditions fail to come about for these ’suitable hands’ to be created. As long as it
is economically convenient to invest in illegal activities, this sector will grow, and
the form of entrepreneurship coherent with it will reproduce. Operating in the
illegal sector of the economy entails potentially extremely high costs, above all
the possibility of being discovered and of suddenly losing one’s accumulated
wealth. But if the risks are reduced by cover-up and concealment strategies, then
the opportunity to make profits incomparably higher than those to be gained by
investing in legal activities is more than sufficient incentive for individuals to
enter the illegal sector.
Also stunting the growth of entrepreneurial skills oriented to productive
activities in the legal sector is the persistence of forms of protection/extortion and
of violence by organized crime. The persistence of violence in the market
discourages potential investors, reduces the range of potential entrepreneurs, and
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induces those wishing to enter the economic arena to arm themselves with the
same weapons as those wielded by the Mafia groups.
Overall, therefore, the extension of a violent hand over the market hampers the
development of attitudes expressing market acquisitiveness, and encourages
behaviour marked by a spirit of plunder and predatory aggression. Conse-
quently, general market predictability as a condition for firms’ profitability is
severely impaired, and this discourages entry to the legal sector - because of
lower profits compared with the illegal sector, because of higher extra costs (the
necessity of paying for protection/extortion) and because of the risk of enforced
closure due to socially diffused violence.
The diffusion of organized crime imposes this kind of risk on anyone who
intends to go into business, as demonstrated by the recent history of the Italian
South. In the last ten years, industrial employment and per capita income have
grown only in those regions of the South where there is no powerful and
widespread organized crime. In regions severely afflicted by organized crime,
income has grown to a lesser extent, and industrial employment has fallen. This
testifies to the depressive effects of organized crime on the spirit of enterprise.

PUBLIC POLICIES

If these are the reasons, connected with the presence of organized crime, for the
growth of illegal trafficking and the discouragement of legal entrepreneurial
initiatives, how effective are public policies in conditioning or encouraging these
tendencies? I shall try to show briefly how hyper-normization (that is excessive
numbers of norms and rules), under-implementation, and even more so a
combination of the two, affect the relationship between the growth of illegal
activities and the growth of violent social regulation. I begin with examination of
the way in which hyper-normization can influence the expansion of the sphere
itself of illegal traffic.
We know that it is the legal-normative configuration of behaviours on the part
of the state that defines the categories of legal and illegal. Whenever the state
intervenes normatively to establish a specific form of behaviour as juridically
liable to penal (or administrative) sanctions, by so doing it has extended the
sphere of (penally or administratively) illegal behaviours.
Everything not subject to the state’s normative intervention is unaffected by
this distinction, and is therefore legal (juridically legal is everything that is not
expressly prohibited). The progressive extension of the state’s functions in
contemporary societies has brought with it an expansion of the sphere of
normative intervention, and therefore an expansion of the category of illegal
behaviours. By contrast, there are behaviours that, with the passage of time, lose
their social importance as crimes and are depenalized.
However, cases exist where the normative extension of the sphere of the illegal
translates into a series of genuinely perverse effects. I refer here to all those
phenomena in which the strength of social behaviours is greater than the
repression of the law, so that the latter comes to assume the simple guise of moral
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sanction (which is contrary to the lay function of modern criminal law). A classic
example is provided by Prohibition in the United States, which Whyte (1947) has
documented as laying the basis for the formation of groups of urban racketeers,
the typical examples of power syndicates.
In Italy today, the same considerations apply to the law of some years ago
which made drug addiction punishable by law (and not solely with administra-
tive sanctions). This had notable perverse effects, not least the extension of
violent regulation.
The chief error committed by those who proposed and approved the law was
to believe that drug trafficking can be combated by acting on the demand side;

they failed to realize that the drugs market is substantially one of supply, and in
which demand is highly inelastic. Possession of a dose larger than the addict’s
daily requirement was thus equated with dealing, so that the addict was treated
on a par with the pusher, and received the same punishment.
The application of the same penalty for dealers and consumers created the
conditions for greater connivance between them, whereas an effective anti-drug
policy should seek to provoke a conflict of interests between consumer and
dealer. Moreover, by introducing the criterion of the ’average daily dose’ the
consumer was forced to establish a much closer (daily) relationship with the

pusher and was in greater danger of being forced into drug dealing.
Finally, the law failed to take account of certain paradoxes typical of the drug
supply. When the amount of drugs available on the market diminishes - owing,
for example, to the seizure of consignments - the dealers tend to cut their
merchandise with all manner of substances to make up the original quantity. This
either exposes consumers to a serious health risk or, because the merchandise is
weaker, it induces them to increase their doses. These extra doses they must look
for outside their normal circle of supply, and therefore in markets whose
characteristics they do not know. One of the consequences is an increase in
deaths by overdose, an increase which is usually highlighted as indicating a rise in
consumption and exploited to step up demands for more repressive measures
against drug users. Instead, however, it may indicate not an increase in
consumption but more simply the above-described mechanism of a reduction in
supply (Moss, 1991).
Why have I dwelt on this law? Because it is a classic example of the excessive
extension of the sphere of the illegal. According to the modern principles of the
secularity of criminal law in Western societies, those who do not cause damage to
others cannot be punished. Those who harm only themselves cannot be
prosecuted. This is a principle that derives from the separation between law and
morals, which is the foundation of the secularity of modern criminal law. The
recent Italian law on drug use not only violated this principle but, from a
technical standpoint, it was a case of qualitative hyper-normization accompanied
by under-implementation. In fact, the law imposed such a heavy workload on
the authorities responsible for its implementation that it could only be partially
put into effect. Extending the sphere of the illegal without creating the conditions
for the implementation of norms led to the proliferation of illegal economic
activities. And this increased demand for the criminal government of criminality
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and hence the multiplication of power syndicates with their violent social
I
regulation.’
Another case of hyper-normization, this time in the administrative field and
one quantitative in character, is provided by the regulations governing
public-works contracts. The large number and complexity of the procedures and
steps involved in taking a decision assign irresponsible discretionary powers to
the politicians and officials concerned. In fact, discretion is granted in the
awarding of contracts, but responsibility is not, because the administrative
procedure follows a rigidly established set of passages which allow no formal
discretionary power to the decision-maker. However, because of the large
number of stages through which the administrative measure must pass, officials
and politicians can be obstructive and can use delaying tactics. In situations of
this kind it is not difficult for the power brokers, who specialize in the
manipulation of people and environments, to intervene by wielding the weapon
of corruption. The rules governing contracts and sub-contracts represent one of
the points most vulnerable to penetration by violent regulation. The examples no
longer only relate to the South of Italy; here the number of businesspeople and
local-government officials murdered by organized crime in the 1980s is telling
evidence of the burgeoning violent regulation of the economy. But in other
regions of Italy, the explosion of scandals involving the corruption of politicians
and businesspeople in the awarding of contracts and public works is evidence
that a context of corrupt exchange between economic and political actors
provides opportunities for infiltration by organized crime.

CONCLUSIONS

The analytical model of organized crime proposed above provides, I believe, a

number of interpretative tools, both generally and with specific reference to the
Sicilian Mafia. In conclusion, I shall summarize the principal aspects of its
usefulness for the empirical analysis of criminal groups.
The distinction I have proposed between groups engaged in illegal trafficking
and groups which control a territory politically and through the use of violence is
an analytical-conceptual one. In the real world, the members of a power

syndicate organize illegal traffic, and drugs traffickers may form themselves into
groups of power syndicates. In other words, empirical enquiry reveals
interweavings and overlaps, partial or total, between the two kinds of group.
These interweavings and overlaps are often the source of conflict among criminal
groups. In fact, the logic of action inherent to illegal trafficking requires that,
within a certain territory, the levels of illegality and violence must be kept within
those limits, from time to time established, that enable the power syndicate to
avoid strong repressive action by the forces of law and order. A criminal group’s
ability to control a territory depends on a subtle equilibrium and a tacit
non-interference agreement with the police. Illegal trafficking is only possible if
violence is not excessive, if order is maintained by the criminal groups themselves
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and if a situation of urgent social alarm does not arise. It is on the basis of these
principles that loyalty within the power syndicates is defined.
Conversely, the logic of action governing an enterprise syndicate takes the
opposite form. The organization of illegal activities, like arms smuggling or drugs
trafficking, requires actors to go beyond the confines of the politico-territorial
loyalty deriving from their membership of a power syndicate. They must seek
alliances and form cartels with the members of other power syndicates. This
creates conflicts and tensions between different logics of action, and hence

internally to the power groups that control the territory. Numerous statements
by mafiosi regarding conflicts internal to their organizations confirm this point.
Usually, in fact, conflicts between contenders for the title of capomafia and the
established bosses follow proposals or demands to expand the organization’s
sphere of illegal activity or to enter new markets which are resisted by the old
Mafia bosses.
A second point concerns more specifically the Sicilian Mafia. This has always
been characterized by deep territorial rootedness, which is a typical feature of a
power syndicate. There are probably two reasons for this: first, because the
growth of the mafia was contemporaneous with the building of the Italian
nation-state; second, because the state has always found it difficult to assert its
authority in Sicily, particularly as regards the penetration and the effective and
efficient operation of administrative structures and legitimation. Both these
factors have been responsible for the deep territorial roots of the Sicilian Mafia,
especially in Palermo and in central-western Sicily, and they have created the
conditions for the onset of the forms of violent social regulation that I described
earlier. They have, moreover, produced close connections and exchange between
mafiosi and politicians - these being one of the other historically distinctive
features of the Sicilian Mafia. By means of territorial control, the mafiosi
command blocks of votes which they can offer to politicians seeking election as
commodities for barter.
A final advantage deriving from application of this model is the light it sheds
on the present crisis of the Sicilian Mafia. Increasing profits from illegal

trafficking confront the Mafia with growing problems in the recycling and
laundering of dirty money. Quantitatively important for these laundering
operations are the opportunities offered by the state financing dispensed for
contracts and public works. Exerting control over the flows of public money by
means of privileged relationships with politicians is therefore essential. Through-
out the 1980s, state intervention in the Mezzogiorno and in Sicily took this form,
and therefore favoured Mafia groups. At the beginning of the 1990s, however,
the general crisis of legitimacy that has hit the traditional Italian political class has
curtailed the freedom of action of politicians. While the freedom of politicians to
favour Mafia groups has decreased, these latter have stepped up pressure to
obtain as much, indeed more, than they received previously. This has created a
’double bind’ which upsets the balance between mafiosi and the politicians linked
to them, who are no longer able (also because of the demand for moral cleansing
that has swept the country) to guarantee access to public financing for their
mafiosi ’grand electors’. This has restricted the room for manoeuvre available to
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the Mafia families, which have reacted by assassinating the magistrates most
inveterately hostile to them and the politicians who were once their friends (like
the ex-Christian Democrat Eurodeputy, and ex-mayor of Palermo, Salvo Lima).
Raising the level of conflict, however, has so far not achieved the desired effect
for the Mafia: that is, of forcing its opponents to beat a retreat. Instead, the
offensive against the Sicilian Mafia has grown both in quantity and quality
following the improved organization of the police and the magistracy, and
important successes have been achieved in its repression.

NOTES

I wish to thank David Nelken and Tamar Pitch, who read a first draft of this paper and
made useful suggestions on how to improve it.

1. In the referendum of 18 April 1993, the majority of voters opted for drug addiction
to be no longer punishable as a criminal offence.

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