[Séminaire général du CEE] Mobsters beyond rationality

The risks of doing business in the underworld push criminals to behave with strict individual rationality. In theory, they should embody homo economicus at its rawest. This same pressure however makes it harder for them to build and sustain a well functioning organisation: while indispensable to sustain intra-criminal cooperation, an organisation demands a level of trust and loyalty, which is hard for them to achieve. Here I describe how the Sicilian Mafia relied on superstition and social norms to meet that challenge, deterring betrayals and buttressing its internal hierarchy.
The presentation is in three parts. One part, on the social norm to respect elderly men, is new and not written anywhere. The two other parts reflect back on some of my earlier work (on the initiation ritual see The Sicilian Mafia, Harvard UP 1993 pp. on 146-155; on the beliefs in the immortality of the word ‘mafia’ see Codes of the Underworld, Princeton UP 2009 pp. 213-215).

Speaker 

Diego Gambetta, Collegio Carlo Alberto

Chair

Federico Varese, Sciences Po, CEE