Theft can be analytically reduced to a contract breach over property rights

Evidence

Some mafiosi see themselves as providing protection from crime rather than dispute settlement. According to Contorno: “The Cosa Nostra was born to help the poor and helpless… If something happened to [these] people, they did not go to the Carabinieri; they came to the family of their area [and said], ‘They stole my car,’ ‘they stole [from] my house,’ and we found those things for them” (TC-GdS, April 12, 1986). Since a theft can be seen as a breach of a particular contract called property rights, as I argued in Chapter 1, in analytical terms this form of protection is like dispure settlement. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 434

Categorization

• DEFINE: Key analytical move connecting the reader’s theoretical frame — it is precisely because theft breaches a ‘property-rights contract’ that mafia protection and dispute settlement are the same service.
• XREF: This redefinition is the hinge that lets Gambetta’s private-protection model cover theft, not just contract disputes; connects to Milgrom’s private judges who arbitrate breaches.