| May 2022 onwards | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1142 | 799 | 86 |
| Full Text Views | 18 | 2 | 0 |
| PDF Downloads | 25 | 2 | 0 |
| EPUB Downloads | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Il Padrino’s dilemma: a simple model of Mafia decision making
Search for other papers by Ronald Wintrobe in
Current site
Google Scholar
The major threat to security in the 21st century appears to come from ‘ungoverned spaces’ – areas where governmental control is weak or contested by clans, gangs or terrorist organizations. In a situation where trust in government is weak, the Mafia provides the service of enforcing transactions and protection. The paper builds a model to explain why, even though the Mafia appears to fulfill a valuable function, namely to provide contract enforcement when state support for that is weak, it is nevertheless so destructive. The reason, I suggest, is not simply that the Mafia is a private supplier of a public good (trust) but that it also supplies a public bad (distrust). The Mafia supplies trust by enforcing contracts but it also has to prevent that trust from spreading to those who do not pay. To stop this, the Mafia also supplies distrust. So the Mafia leader always has a choice between two ways of making profits: to supply trust, or to supply distrust. This is Il Padrino’s dilemma. The next and crucial point is that trust tends to get undervalued and distrust overvalued by Mafia leaders. Among the reasons for this are that trust is fragile, while distrust is durable, combined with the peculiar ‘ownership’ structure of the Mafia, which is that the reputation of the organization cannot be capitalized and sold. So the Mafia leader oversupplies distrust and neglects the damages this does to the society in which it operates. This distortion in Il Padrino’s thinking—the undervaluation of trust and overvaluation of distrust relative to their social values—partly explains why the Mafia is so destructive, and why areas where their control is strong tend to remain poor.
Search for other papers by Ronald Wintrobe in
Current site
Google Scholar
| May 2022 onwards | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1142 | 799 | 86 |
| Full Text Views | 18 | 2 | 0 |
| PDF Downloads | 25 | 2 | 0 |
Institutional librarians can find more information about free trials here
We are a leading social science publisher
committed to making a difference.
Bristol University Press and
Policy Press
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk