Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government: The Example of the Mediterranean

Abstract

Everyone has heard about the problem of rubbish in Naples and Campania since, in December 2008, Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency in the region, and handed the problem over to the army. As is well known, the Camorra organizes the traffic of toxic wastes on open-air sites, organizes their transportation from the whole of Italy or, indeed, Europe, and manages the quarries and the dumping operations, while household waste in the region simply remains untreated. But can we be satisfied with this version of the story, which depicts a wicked Mafia and a powerless state? Certainly not. For the 2008 crisis was merely one episode in a much more complicated “vicious circle,” which began in 1994 (at the latest) with the first declaration of a state of emergency in the region, and the setting up of a commission dedicated to the question.1 At the origin of the disaster there lay, on the one hand, an enterprise that does not belong to the Camorra but is linked to the very “clean” and legitimate company Fiat. The enterprise took quick and easy advantage of the emergency policies to offer extremely dubious benefits and real industrial negligence. It proposed a quite unviable technical project, deceiving the state as to its services; it selected obsolete equipment, which made it necessary to resort to dumping; it was forever behind schedule in setting up waste disposal factories; it resorted to unscrupulous subcontracting. On the other hand, local managers and administrators who managed the extraordinary commission reinforced their powers and extended their networks of friends and clients. As a result of the state of emergency, they accepted various exemptions such as the use of subcontracting or the choice, in the course of the invitation to tender, of the enterprise which no doubt offered the lowest level of services, but in a shorter time-frame, and they used their extraordinary powers to evade the traditional circuits and mechanisms of public management. The Camorra was in no way behind this situation: it neither set up the operation nor oversaw it. By means of subcontracting and invitations to tender for waste transportation and the management of dumping, the Camorra was simply responding to a demand, taking advantage of an extra opportunity to do business, and making the most of the historical inability of public institutions to control the situation.