Hierarchy, Tasks, Space: An analysis of tie formation in the Palermo Mafia

IF 2.9 2区社会学 Q1 ANTHROPOLOGY

Social Networks Pub Date : 2025-04-30 DOI:10.1016/j.socnet.2025.04.002

Michele Battisti , Andrea Mario Lavezzi , Roberto Musotto

{"title":"Hierarchy, Tasks, Space: An analysis of tie formation in the Palermo Mafia","authors":"Michele Battisti , Andrea Mario Lavezzi , Roberto Musotto","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.04.002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We apply social network analysis to study tie formation among a large group of members of the Sicilian Mafia, one of the oldest criminal organizations, operating in the province of Palermo. Data come from the police operation denoted “Perseo”, which led to the arrest of 99 individuals active in the period 2006–2008. Specifically, we focus on the effect of hierarchical structure, task specialization patterns, and geographical organization on the probability of tie formation by estimating dyadic regressions. We find: First, if both agents in a dyad are bosses, two effects of opposite sign are at work: a scale effect, that increases the probability, and a homophily effect, that decreases such probability. Second, organizational task homophily positively affects tie formation, while criminal task homophily does not. Third, the key geographical variable driving tie formation is joint membership to the same <em>mandamento</em>, which makes sheer geographical distance non-statistically significant. We corroborate our results with several robustness tests and discuss their implications for an understanding of criminal organizations, such as the Cosa Nostra.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 213-228"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Networks","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378873325000188","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

We apply social network analysis to study tie formation among a large group of members of the Sicilian Mafia, one of the oldest criminal organizations, operating in the province of Palermo. Data come from the police operation denoted “Perseo”, which led to the arrest of 99 individuals active in the period 2006–2008. Specifically, we focus on the effect of hierarchical structure, task specialization patterns, and geographical organization on the probability of tie formation by estimating dyadic regressions. We find: First, if both agents in a dyad are bosses, two effects of opposite sign are at work: a scale effect, that increases the probability, and a homophily effect, that decreases such probability. Second, organizational task homophily positively affects tie formation, while criminal task homophily does not. Third, the key geographical variable driving tie formation is joint membership to the same mandamento, which makes sheer geographical distance non-statistically significant. We corroborate our results with several robustness tests and discuss their implications for an understanding of criminal organizations, such as the Cosa Nostra.

查看原文本刊更多论文

层级、任务、空间：对巴勒莫黑手党关系形成的分析

我们应用社会网络分析来研究在巴勒莫省活动的最古老的犯罪组织之一西西里黑手党的一大群成员之间的关系形成。数据来自警方代号为“Perseo”的行动，该行动逮捕了99名在2006-2008年期间活跃的个人。具体地说，我们通过估计二元回归来关注层次结构、任务专业化模式和地理组织对关系形成概率的影响。我们发现：首先，如果二分体中的两个主体都是老板，则两个相反符号的效应在起作用：规模效应（增加概率）和同质效应（减少概率）。第二，组织任务同质性对关系形成有正向影响，而犯罪任务同质性对关系形成无正向影响。第三，驱动纽带形成的关键地理变量是同一命令的联合成员资格，这使得纯粹的地理距离不具有统计意义。我们用几个稳健性测试证实了我们的结果，并讨论了它们对理解犯罪组织（如Cosa Nostra）的影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Social Networks Multiple-

CiteScore

5.90

自引率

12.90%

发文量

118

期刊介绍： Social Networks is an interdisciplinary and international quarterly. It provides a common forum for representatives of anthropology, sociology, history, social psychology, political science, human geography, biology, economics, communications science and other disciplines who share an interest in the study of the empirical structure of social relations and associations that may be expressed in network form. It publishes both theoretical and substantive papers. Critical reviews of major theoretical or methodological approaches using the notion of networks in the analysis of social behaviour are also included, as are reviews of recent books dealing with social networks and social structure.