ABSTRACT

In the immediate post-war years, Neapolitan politicians used the traditional clientelistic system by exploiting some of the important guappi both in the city and in the hinterland, it is clear that the gangster would be more useful to politicians in a political system where the politician (individually or as a faction) could have direct control over the political process: in Italy, this was at local government level and in the hinterland rather than in the city. This chapter presents a study of the interaction of agents belonging to the criminal sub-system and representatives of the other sub-systems that has brought to the fore the different terms of the exchange which existed between camorristi and politicians, and now explained how it developed through time. Between 1990 and 1993, thirty-two local councils were officially dissolved as a result of Camorra infiltration and replaced by government representatives in an attempt to eliminate these corrupt relationships.