Family leadership positions were decided by a few, making elections a formality

Evidence

Antonino Calderone describes a meeting in which positions in the family were decided by only a few members (not by the whole family, as other pentiti report) in a way that suggests elections were irrelevant (AC: I, 245). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 894

Categorization

• QUESTION: Conflicting witness accounts about whether elections were democratic or oligarchic — worth chasing which account the reader’s private-enforcement model requires.