The Politics of Mafia Violence: Explaining Variation in Mafia Killings in Southern Italy (1983–2008)

Francesco N. Moro, Andrea Petrella and Salvatore Sberna

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2016, vol. 28, issue 1, 90-113

Abstract: Violence perpetrated by organized crime nowadays represents a major threat to state stability, both because it directly challenges political institutions, targeting officials and using terrorist techniques, and because severe inter-group conflict strongly affects human security. Though it is a distinctive feature of illegal markets and a constant strategy of Mafia-like groups, the occurrence of violence is localized in time and space. The article aims to explain temporal and spatial variation in Mafia killings focusing on its political determinants, as organized crime is deeply embedded in the political system. The analysis shows that there is a clear link between the structure of the political markets and the severity of violence. In particular, the fragmentation of the political market is negatively associated with the strategy of criminal groups to exploit violence. By contrast, single-party dominance and bipartisanship lead to an increase in homicides since these organizations have few opportunities to access the political arena. Outcomes are assessed through the analysis of monthly homicides reported by police forces in Italian provinces from 1983 to 2008.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09546553.2014.880835 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ftpvxx:v:28:y:2016:i:1:p:90-113

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ftpv20

DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2014.880835

Access Statistics for this article

Terrorism and Political Violence is currently edited by James Forest

More articles in Terrorism and Political Violence from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().