Under mafia rule property rights are earned through protection contracts rather than legal guarantee.

Evidence

In an ordinary legal society everybody, like it or not, effectively signs a contract by law and receives protection accordingly. But imagine instead a society in which property rights are not defined and no one is automatically protected. Here, property rights are acquired only by actively signing a protection contract the terms of which are open to negotiation. What is understood elsewhere as a crime is here regarded as a particular kind of dispute between two parties. Legal convention neatly distinguishes victims from perpetrators, but in mafia terms the right not to be robbed (or kidnapped or cheated) is greater than the right to rob or kidnap or cheat only if the victim’s value to the protector is likewise greater. In fact, there is no such thing as rights. If a thief pays well enough, he qualifies for protection just like anybody else. Mafiosi have no prejudices in this regard. Prerogatives are allocated to the highest bidder, who need not be the richest. The features which distinguish a good customer are not ordinary ones; his wealth and potential ability to pay—and consequently the quality of the protection he receives—are assessed in ways not immediately apparent to conventional economic understanding. The customer may simply be a party to a long-term protection contract. He may be short of cash but capable of returning valuable favors. Services not for sale elsewhere gain common currency here: votes, marriage, murder, bureaucratic dispensations, credit facilities, selective privileges of all sorts. Only so long as mafiosi serve equally attractive customers will their intervention be fair. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 85

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instantiates Gambetta’s private-protection market model the reader is tracking — the mafia as third-party enforcer replacing state property-rights definition.
• DEFINE: Defines the conceptual core of the book: in mafia territory, protection contracts substitute for legal property rights.