Political and Administrative Conditions of Sicily

Political and administrative conditions of Sicily, by Leopoldo Franchetti (Leghorn 1847, Rome 1917), is a mandatory starting point for any review or anthology of literature on the mafia. It is the first of two volumes that conclude an extraordinary and valuable investigation into Sicilian society in 1876 carried out by two of the Kingdom of Italy’s deputies: Leopoldo Franchetti, [author of this first volume,] and Sidney Sonnino, author of the second volume, entitled Farmers in Sicily. Political and administrative conditions of Sicily, which provides a limpidly intelligent account of the state of Sicily at the time. It is an analysis of the social, cultural and political factors that produced a conception of power and a way of managing power that was abysmally distant from that being promoted by the new Piedmontese state. The mafia was thus born out of the unresolved contradiction between the rules of violence and liberal democracy.