Third-party professionals and a politician arbitrated a builders’ cartel dispute

Evidence

In the 1970s three building contractors from Catania formed a consortium which obtained contracts worth “tens of billions of lire for work on dams and airports,” according to Calderone. This trio quarreled, and the whole affair was in danger of falling through. “They reached an agreement thanks to the intervention of three authoritative professionals … and an important politician whose name I cannot recall.” The agreement involved the drawing of lots to establish who should obtain which share of the contracts. To one went the Enna dam and a cash settlement; to the second another dam, probably in the province of Agrigento; and to the third the airports on the smaller Sicilian islands (AC: I, 280-281). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 567

Categorization

• XREF: Third-party arbitration by authoritative professionals and a politician parallels Milgrom et al.’s private judges and the Mafia’s own arbitration role — the state’s agents serving as quasi-private enforcers within a collusive market.