Sicily’s 105 mafia families preclude a region-wide centralized monopoly

Evidence

If certain readers remain skeptical of the significance of Bontade’s outburst, there is further evidence of something more sophisticated than a pattern of occasional relationships and contingent coalitions. In Sicily, according to a 1987 Carabinieri report (CPM-RCC) there are 105 protection firms or families, mostly in the western part of the island, eighteen in Palermo alone, a number that has not changed substantially over the last one hundred years (see Table 1). The number of mafia firms or units seems high and the territorial jurisdiction of each small by comparison with New York, where there have been only five families in the last fifty years. The possibility that the mafia in Sicily would ever become a single centralized protection monopoly covering the entire region (let alone other parts of the world) is negated by this simple evidence alone. The figures, however, tell us nothing about the relationships between these firms, except that they suggest indirectly :hat organizing a cartel or oligopoly from so many units would be a task of considerable complexity (though that is not to say it would be impossible). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 267

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Cements why the cartel/oligopoly question (this chapter’s title, and Milgrom’s private-judge framework) is the binding constraint — 105 units cannot coordinate into one protection monopoly.

Related

• Sicily’s mafia is fragmented across 105 firms, not one monopoly. (similarity 0.95)
• Mafia cartels formed per province only after the late 1950s (similarity 0.87)
• Sicilian cartels organized per province, not as one unified mafia-wide cartel (similarity 0.86)
• Pre-1959 mafia families operated as independent territorial monopolies without federation (similarity 0.85)
• Mafia protection makes collusion more likely, elaborate, and enduring (similarity 0.85)
• Cartelized protection is one possible equilibrium, not an inevitable end state (similarity 0.84)
• Cartel organization is not an automatic equilibrium of protection markets (similarity 0.83)
• Established mafia families never successfully transplanted outside Sicily (similarity 0.83)
• Apparent mafia fragmentation may actually be centralization plus new entrants. (similarity 0.82)
• Mafia families existed even in provinces considered untouched by 1990 (similarity 0.82)
• A mafioso guaranteed cartel quotas when few sellers made collusion enforceable. (similarity 0.81)
• The mafia has remained confined to western Sicily for over a century (similarity 0.81)
• Oligopolistic collusion is pervasive, not rare, in all industrialized economies (similarity 0.81)
• Fewer, larger mafia families reduce inter-firm violent conflict (similarity 0.81)
• Rapid membership growth destabilized Bontade’s consensual authority within the family (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• The mafia persists in a turbulent equilibrium without monopoly or dissolution #corroborates (0.85) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2178