Only authoritarian central power, not democracy, can dismantle the mafia

Evidence

Italy did once have a power which was largely independent of the mafia, or at least of the social strata supporting it, and which did contribute to a partial undoing of the mafia (Duggan 1985): this was of course the Fascist regime. In contrast, democracy, by its very nature, has to rely for consensus on larger parts of the population. … Still today, any attempt to eradicate the mafia is caught between two extremes: that of using too little force and thereby remaining ineffective, and that of using too much, putting civil liberties at risk. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2194

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s trust framework: the state’s failure to acquire legitimation in the south undermines the observable constraint that Hardin argues trust requires.