Mafia di ieri, mafia di oggi

According to many observers the recent past has seen a transition from the traditional Mafia, which as of a rural character, a product of the system of large landed estates, to a modern, urban Mafia, dedicated above all to drug-trafficking. What these terms are actually often used to denote, in descriptions of the long-term patterns of Sicilian crime, are the established and emerging groups which clash in the struggle for power and enter into dubious relations of conflict and negotiation with the authorities. The management of resources through territorial control seems to be a constant feature of mafioso activity; this means that there has been close cooperation amongst the cells in many historical situations. The real historical discontinuity lies rather in the closer rapporto which the underworld has estabilished with the political world since the development of the welfare state, especially in the recent crisis of the mechanisms governing the redistribution of resources by the public sector.