Mafia leaders justified their role as legitimate social arbiters

Evidence

As the latter told the journalist Indro Montanelli in 1958, in a statement which has become famous: “The fact is that in any society there must be a category of persons who put things to rights again when they have become complicated.” — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 976

Categorization

• XREF: Perfect articulation of the demand-side justification for private protection — the mafioso’s own framing of why society ‘needs’ a fixer class. Directly relevant to Don Corleone’s self-presentation as a man who ‘helps his friends’ and settles wrongs. — connects to: Peruvian mobs lynched officials accused of corruption as routine extra-legal control. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1300