The Mafia industry shows strong geographic rigidity within Italy

Evidence

One of the most baffling aspects of this question is that the mafia has not spread to anything like the same extent throughout the rest of Italy. Evidence of the geographic rigidity of this industry is discussed in the conclusion to this volume. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 842

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did the protection racket not diffuse across a unified Italy where formal legal institutions presumably converged? Gambetta flags this as baffling — worth chasing the conclusion’s explanation.
• XREF: The geographic rigidity of the protection-industry parallels the reader’s institutional arguments about why extralegal regimes (law merchant, diamond bourse) stay localized to where their enforcement infrastructure exists.