Protection rackets destabilize when state pressure removes experienced bosses.

Evidence

Many callers have protested about the gangs of freelancers who victimize them despite their paying for the protection of the mafia families, which is at any rate no longer guaranteed. Similarly, press reports indicate that industry is now abandoning Sicily, including even the large corporations which had no qualms about striking deals with mafiosi in the past (Repubblica, November 22, 1990). The press portrays this flight as evidence that the mafia has become stronger and more insatiable than ever. This interpretation is wrong. Nothing is less conducive to long-term, well-established protection than periods of extreme uncertainty which frighten the customers and attract both police and media attention. The intensification of extortion may in fact prove that Falcone was right and that while the authentic mafia is withdrawing into more specialized areas, groups of dilettantes are entering the business—and making a mess of it. Moreover, the consequences of the absence of so many top mafiosi—whether in prison, on the run, or unnaturally deceased—have yet to be taken into account. A lasting reputation in this trade is not easy to improvise, and mafia bosses cannot be replaced overnight. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 674

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘reputation cannot be improvised, bosses not replaced overnight’ claim maps directly onto Gambetta’s own model of reputation as a durable capital asset, and to Milgrom et al.’s point that reputation systems are path-dependent and cannot be rapidly replicated.
• QUESTION: This passage implies entry by amateurs degrades a protection regime — worth chasing whether this parallels the ‘quality degradation’ of a trademark when counterfeiters enter, tying back to Gambetta’s trademark analysis.