ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is the Camorra and its changing relations with local politics, especially in the area of Caserta, a province historically dominated by the strong Camorra cartel named the Casalesi clan. Adopting an approach that involves analysing the decrees that dissolved local councils for mafia infiltration together with crime statistics, this chapter firstly defines the difficulty in analysing mafia–local politics relationships in Italy in the post-war period. Secondly, it explains what mafia–local politics relations look like. Thirdly, it discusses the nature of the mafia–local politics and, fourthly, analyses specific case studies of Camorra infiltration to identify how the relationship has evolved. Lastly, it concludes that there has been a transformation of the use of violence into consensual corrupt tools. According to the authors’ findings, since the mid-1990s there has been a marked shift in the political behaviour shown by the Neapolitan Camorra towards the local political elite, becoming less violent and more businesslike, and using more traditional techniques of corruption.
