The State-Mafia Deal. An Analysis of the Strategies and Patterns of the Sicilian Mafia. 1989-2006

The research seeks to analyze the patterns of relationships between mafia, economy, and politics, from 1992 up until 2006, and to study the forms of continuity and discontinuity of these relationships with that of the period before 1992.

The main hypothesis is that, after the interlude of the attack to the State, the continuity that characterizes the history of the mafia is confirmed as: going through the State remains the winning strategy.

The other hypothesis to verify are that Cosa Nostra takes a shape as a network of relationships, rather than just as a secret criminal organization; that the Governments that have succeded from 1992 up until today have favoured a process a ‘legalization’ of the Mafia; that consequently it can be considered more important what happens ‘outside’ (among its accomplices and protectors) the organization rather than ‘inside’ it: that during the aforementioned period, on a political-media level, the decisions and situations put into practice that have ended up obstructing and discrediting the activity of prosecutors have brought to a progressive raising of the probative threshold in mafia trials, coinciding with increasingly stricter forms of control by politics over the judicial system; that in the period studied there was the consolidation of a financial mafia that increasingly controls - or is part of - the management of companies, hospitals, banks, and other institutions; finally, regarding the relationships with the European Union, this seems to have replaced the old Cassa per il Mezzogiorno.

The research will be based on sources including transcripts and verdicts of trials, reports by the DIA, the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, and reports of the Parliamentaries Commission of Inquiry on the Mafia.