Weak States: Causes and Consequences of the Sicilian Mafia

Aug 20, 2026

The study documents how the Sicilian Mafia’s end-of-19th-century expansion was partly driven by the rise of socialist Peasant Fasci amid weak state presence. In environments lacking strong state enforcement, landlords, estate managers, and local politicians turned to the Mafia to resist peasant demands and suppress unrest. Using 1893 drought variation and rainfall data, the analysis links Fasci location and Mafia spread in 1900, then estimates medium- to long-term effects. Findings show substantial negative impacts on literacy and public goods in the 1910s–1920s, along with effects on political competition that persist beyond later decades, though other long-run outcomes are weaker and often marginal.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages45

Reading Time1 h 53 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Mafia expansion and weak state conditions

Role of Peasant Fasci and socialist mobilization

Identification strategy using 1893 drought and rainfall

Review of Economic Studies (2020) 87, 537–581 doi:10 . 1093/restud/rdz009 © The Author(s) 2019 . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Review of Economic Studies Limited. Advance access publication 25 February 2019 Weak States: Causes and Consequences of the Sicilian Maﬁa DARON ACEMOGLU MIT GIUSEPPE DE FEO University of Leicester and GIACOMO DAVIDE DE LUCA University of York and LICOS, KU Leuven First version received January 2018; Editorial decision December 2018; Accepted February 2019 (Eds.) We document that the spread of the Maﬁa in Sicily at the end of the 19th century was in part caused by the rise of socialist Peasant Fasci organizations. In an environment with weak state presence, this socialist threat triggered landowners, estate managers, and local politicians to turn to the Maﬁa to resist and combat peasant demands. We show that the location of the Peasant Fasci is signiﬁcantly affected by a severe drought in 1893, and using information on rainfall, we estimate the impact of the Peasant Fascion the location of the Maﬁa in 1900 . We provide extensive evidence that rainfall before and after this critical period has no effect on the spread of the Maﬁa or various economic and political outcomes. In the second part of the article, we use this source of variation in the strength of the Maﬁa in 1900 to estimate its medium-term and long-term effects. We ﬁnd signiﬁcant and quantitatively large negative impacts of the Maﬁa on literacy and various public goods in the 1910s and 20s. We also show a sizable impact of the Maﬁa on political competition, which could be one of the channels via which it affected local economic outcomes. We document negative effects of the Maﬁa on longer-term outcomes (in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s) as well, but these are in general weaker and often only marginally signiﬁcant. One exception is its persistent and strong impact on political competition. Key words: Criminal organizations, Economic development, Maﬁa, Political competition, Weak states. JEL Codes: P16, K42, H11, H75 1. INTRODUCTION The criminal syndicate known as the Maﬁa has played a deﬁning role in the Sicilian economy and politics over the last 150 years, and has often been proffered as one of the prime reasons The editor in charge of this paper was Nicola Gennaioli. Downloaded from [https://academic.oup.com/restud/article-abstract/87/2/537/5364272 by Georgetown University user on 09 March 2020](https://academic.oup.com/restud/article-abstract/87/2/537/5364272 by Georgetown University user on 09 March 2020) 538 REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES why Sicily has lagged behind the rest of Italy in economic and social development.1 Thoughthe Sicilian Maﬁa has signiﬁcantly weakened after the Maxi trials of the 1980s and its further confrontation with the Italian state in the 1990s, it is still active in many Sicilian municipalities; between 2001 and 2014, forty-three municipalities were put under external administration to weed out the extensive involvement of the Maﬁa in local governments and public procurement (Ministero dell’Interno, 2015) . Though many aspects of the Sicilian Maﬁa are unique to the economic and social conditions of the island and its particular history, there are also several commonalities between the Maﬁa and other organized crime syndicates in Italy (such as the Camorra in Naples and ’Ndranghetain Calabria) as well as the various drug gangs in Mexico, Colombia, and Central America. All of these organizations appear to have partly ﬁlled the void created by a weak state, and may have contributed to the continued weakness of state institutions and to economic underdevelopment. In this article, we seek to contribute to the literature on the causes and consequences of the Sicilian Maﬁa and other criminal organizations. The ﬁrst part of the article proposes an explanation for the Maﬁa’s expansion throughout Sicily in the last decade of the 19th century. Though the Maﬁa’s roots

FAQs

What primary factor does the study identify behind the Mafia’s expansion in late-19th-century Sicily?

It argues that the rise of socialist Peasant Fasci organizations, together with weak state presence, encouraged local elites to rely on the Mafia to resist peasant demands.

How does the paper use rainfall and the 1893 drought in its empirical strategy?

It shows that the location of the Peasant Fasci is significantly influenced by severity of the 1893 drought, and it uses rainfall information to estimate the impact on where the Mafia spread by 1900.

What long- and medium-term consequences does the Mafia have according to the article?

The paper finds negative and quantitatively large effects on literacy and public goods in the 1910s–1920s, effects on political competition as a possible channel, and longer-run negative impacts that are generally weaker except for persistent effects on political competition.

Aug 20, 2026

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