Construction firms pay mafiosi for dispute resolution and labor control, not intimidation
Evidence
The services offered by mafiosi are comprehensive. The Cassina construction firm won a contract to build the new banks of a river which cut across the town of Ribera. Threatened with prosecution, Luciano Cassina revealed that “the sums we paid were not for material supplies received from [Carmelo] Colletti, but represented payment for ‘services’ of a different nature which Colletti had provided for us” (OSAG: 98-99; OSAG Arnone: 153). The builder was eager to stress that he had not been intimidated by Colletti, who “had always behaved correctly.” Don Carmelo “solved problems,” such as ensuring a constant and reliable flow of building materials to the site (OSAG Arnone: 193), mediating on every controversy with the locals (pp. 149-151), “preventing trade union activities which might jeopardize the productivity of the site” (OSAG: 170), and making sure no thefts occurred (p. 151). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 428
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Direct evidence for the Gambetta private-protection market model; the Cassina-Colletti contract is the archetypal private enforcement arrangement, and the trade-union suppression clause connects to Milgrom et al.’s merchant judge solving the commitment problem among parties with no state.
Related
- Protection purchases bundle dispute mediation with labor and theft control (similarity 0.86)
- Mafiosi’s real product has nothing to do with their nominal jobs (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Mafiosi sell protection rather than illegally produced goods.
#expands(0.85) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 31