Family protection contracts are priced by state effectiveness
Evidence
Where la fede privata (the private trust) prevails (Pagden 1988), the family embodies the archetypal protection contract in its elementary form, whereby men are expected to protect weaker members, who in exchange accept the high price of submitting to the will of their protectors. By contrast, where the state protects its individual members effectively, the family to a certain extent forfeits this function, and the price paid by the protectees to fathers, uncles, and husbands is correspondingly less exorbitant. Thus, the linguistic association of the mafia with family and belonging—famiglia, capo famiglia, zio, padre, picciotti, è cosa di, è cosa nostra, appartiene a—is not just analogical but substantively accurate. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 150
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Exactly the state-failure → private-enforcement → commitment-price chain the reader is mapping: weak state protection raises the price of family submission.
Related
- Family protection substitutes for state protection at a steep price of submission (similarity 0.92)
- The mafia protects everyone from peasants to arms dealers (similarity 0.78)
- The mafia persists only where the state fails to supply genuine protection. (similarity 0.78)