Protection contracts structurally generate friendship bonds beyond their legal terms

Evidence

Once the mark of protection is stamped on a client, it is not susceptible to fine distinctions. Don Peppe, Mr. X, and even the villain with his eye on Mr. X are all much better off if the matter is clear-cut. As a result, both Don Peppe and Mr. X have a rational interest in agreeing on indefinite long-term contracts. This is the basis on which customers are, as the economic jargon puts it, internalized, on which, in other words, they become a permanent feature of the firm, almost its property. This is also the economic basis on which symbolic constraints such as friendship and ultimately membership emerge as ubiquitous terms of the trade, indeed of the protection contract itself, a pact that inevitably transcends its own merely contractual nature. “When someone asked for protection,” one mafioso reports, “even if he paid for it, from then on we had to treat him as a friend” ([Russo] 1988: 105). The protection contract is the structural framework out of which the organic bonds linking protectors and their customers grow—bonds which are commonly perceived as the essence of the mafia. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 148

Categorization

• XREF: Directly maps to the Godfather-bonds in Puzo’s novel where Don Corleone treats clients as friends — the reader’s stated analytical project of tracing commitment mechanisms in the Mafia as private enforcer. — connects to: Frequent business counterparts resolve disputes privately to protect ongoing relationships
• ADDENDUM: The internalization of clients into permanent property parallels the organic bonds discussed in ‘On Sacrifice’ and the tree-grafting metaphor of interdependence in ‘Grafting & Growth’.
• DEFINE: Introduces ‘internalized’ as economic jargon for making customers permanent features of a firm.