Political Order and Political Decay (90 page)

BOOK: Political Order and Political Decay

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7: ITALY AND THE LOW-TRUST EQUILIBRIUM

18
. On the origins of the Mafia, see also Alexander Stille,
Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic
(New York: Pantheon, 1995), pp. 14â17. The Mafia was neither the first nor the last criminal organization to fill a vacuum left by a weak state. Contemporary examples are the paramilitaries that plague Colombia, a mountainous country with dense jungles where the state has historically had tremendous difficulty exerting its authority. Wealthy Colombian landowners threatened by guerrillas from leftist groups including the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia (FARC) and the EjÃ©rcito de LiberaciÃ³n National (ELN) began hiring paramilitaries to protect their farms and ranches. These groups evolved into autonomous organizations with substantial firepower that began branching out into drug trafficking, extortion, and a host of other criminal activities. The drug cartels operating in twenty-first-century Mexico as well take advantage of a state that historically has been (and remains) weak in police enforcement of citizens' basic rights.