Organised Crime and the Italian State

The mafia phenomenon is certainly a complex and historical one. What started as an answer to weak political control over the Italian South, quickly became an intricate conglomerate of criminal and economic activities, focused around the notion of the (extended) family and family-like ties. Mafia has evolved into a parastatal formation with many leverages of power, which complicates things for the actual Italian government.

Mafia’s evolution

What changed in the past years is that 'Ndrangheta and other strong mafia organisations became channels of investment and entrepreneurial strongholds. There is a slight similarity to post-Soviet oligarchs in terms of parastatal powers that exercise control through their financial means, yet mafia is far more famous for employing extortion, corruption and physical violence as part of their control tactics. Indeed, the studies conducted in the last three decades (from the 1980s onwards) underline the passage of mafia as cultural phenomenon, i.e. as a subculture, behaviour pattern, or mentality, to a well-developed organisation, i.e. ‘Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra or one of the other organizations.

Connections and infiltration

It is in this context that we have to understand the infiltration of Mafiosi into administration and public service, thus making it impossible to separate the state apparatus from the workings of the mafia.

Now with the mafia so tightly bound with the workings of the state, what can politicians do to manage statal affairs and protect the people that elected them? Shouldn’t the interests of the people come before political integrity? Concluding a deal with para-statal formation for the benefit of the population is not necessarily entirely negative. Once the organisation holds enough (political, economic, social, criminal…) power, working against it might mean working against your own people. The stato-mafia deal could actually be seen as a good political move (or the only possible option).

A legitimation of illegality

In Italy, politicians seems to have adopted a kind of legitimazion of illegality, as the latter is perceived as a resource functional to the institutional model and to the country development. The endless mafia trial and the few real opposition to mafia presence made the citizens perceive it as natural and inevitable. Moreover, the civil anti-mafia movement appears without a clear project. Mainly informal and organised in association, it has an ambivalent approach: on the one side it asks for reforms, through the removal of those politicians accused of collusion with the organized crime, while on the other, it is proposing alternative practices and theorisations. In both cases their claims remain, unfortunately, mainly hypothetical.

Presence at the political and civilian level

On the other hand, mafia is in step with the time and not some cultural remnant of the past. It has political ambition. Infiltration of their members into public administration and dealing with the government officials prove it. Thus politicians are forced to walk the thin line between the demands of the mafia and the support for the rule of law. Erosion of the rule of law is surely detrimental to the functioning and authority of the state. But violence against civilians and anti-mafia activists doesn’t help to solve the problem either.

Thus the situation calls for the merging of the two levels – civilian and governmental. By creating a bottom-up nationwide anti-mafia movement, politicians could exploit the wave of insurgency to push favourable anti-mafia decisions and (re-)establish authority. Only joint efforts can bring results in fighting against organised crime with such effective leverages of power.