Patrimonial Alliances and Failures of State Penetration: A Historical Dynamic of Crime, Corruption, Gangs, and Mafias

The historical shift from patrimonialism to bureaucracy is the key organizational transformation of the past thousand years. Classically, patrimonialism was organization based on private households, plus alliances among them. But there are two types of patrimonial organization: expanded households and patrimonial alliances or pseudo-tribes. The latter include ad hoc warrior coalitions, frequently organized as fictive kin. The main historical cause of the shift from patrimonialism to bureaucracy was the military-fiscal revolution and ensuing state penetration into society. But patrimonial politics did not entirely disappear. In some areas, the state fails to penetrate, leaving the possibility of mafia-style organization. Elsewhere, political machines are a mixed form of incomplete bureaucracy. Gangs are patrimonial organizations, growing in dialectical conflict with bureaucratic penetration and efforts at control. Through a comparison of American, Sicilian, and Russian mafias, the questions considered are whether crime organization recapitulates the history of the state, why some gangs become bigger than others, and why organized crime succeeds or fails in varying degrees.