Do All Roads Lead to Rome? Antimafia Commemoration in Sicilian Towns

• In Event: Italian Politics and Society in Transition

Abstract

In the wake of Cosa Nostra’s campaign of violence against the Italian state in the 1980s, networks of violence and corruption were uncovered that would have reverberating effects on Italian democracy. In addition to serving as a catalyst for legislative changes, antimafia efforts played a contributing role in bringing down the ruling Christian Democrat party in 1993. Following the verdict of the 1986 Maxi Trial, which led to the conviction of hundreds of mafia leaders, and public outrage after the brutal assassinations of several high-profile antimafia figures, many towns in Sicily experienced a wave of efforts to honor those who had resisted Cosa Nostra. Yet establishing commemorative structures was not without resistance, and considerable variation emerged in local decisions to honor those who gave their lives in the fight against the Mafia. In this paper, we consider the relationship of public commemoration of antimafia figures to local governance. In particular, we leverage municipal-level data on the density of streets named after anti-mafia activists to consider the impact of public government endorsement of resistance to the mafia. As street names are chosen at the municipal level and require government consent to be established, they offer a particularly useful means to assess variation in the political processes surrounding this question. We expect that demonstrating a high density of antimafia commemoration requires both an ability and a political willingness to publicly oppose organized crime. In order to assess ability, we evaluate the relationship of street density to local mafia presence. In order to assess political willingness, we consider the proportion of the electorate that voted for parties that have historically had strong ties to the Mafia, including the Christian Democrats and Forza Italia.

Authors

• Maura Cremin, University of Chicago

• Noah Schouela, University of Chicago