Some southern Italian towns remained without solutions to distrust rather than forming mafias

Evidence

The mafia may be a solution, however perverse, to the problem of distrust, but it is not the only one. Some parts of the South found no solution at all, and these degenerated into miserable places in which to live. In the village explored by Edward Banfield (1958) lack of trust plainly remained uncompensated, while other towns, such as Pisticci (Davis 1975), developed a system of patronage rather than a mafia. Still others established pockets of civil society on a par with those throughout the rest of Italy. Hence, there must be some additional factor that accounts for the origin of the mafia. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 200

Categorization

• XREF: Crucial comparative evidence for the reader’s model: some regions substitute patronage, others stay untrusting, others form mafias — the mafia is one equilibrium among several, so the origin requires an additional causal factor.