Embedding Corruption into Governance: The “Graveyard Affair” in 1970s Naples and its Aftermath

ABSTRACT

While Italy is not immune to corruption that breaks the law, it provides a test case for corruption that does not break the law and for corruption that is made legal. This article centres on the dynamics and ramifications of “the graveyard affair”. This case of corrupt power networks in late 1970s Naples was an important precursor to the corruption scandal of the 1990s. It produced convictions, leading to apparently significant changes in the local political set up in favour of politicians who, while presenting themselves as morally superior, progressed to embed legal corruption in the political equation. They pursued discriminatory policies that were later perfected by their like-minded successors. Though legal, these policies are received across society as morally and ethically corrupt, leading ordinary Southerners to feel that they are treated as second-class citizens.

KEYWORDS:

• Power networks
• corruption
• judicial investigation
• bad governance
• political bias
• “graveyard affair”
• morality
• law
• legitimacy
• Naples

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Italo Pardo (PhD, University of London, 1988) is Hon. Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent. In the 1980s, he pioneered research in the urban West in British anthropology and in the early 1990s initiated anthropological research on legitimacy, morality, corruption and the Western élite. Professor Pardo has authored a large body of peer-reviewed articles and books based on his research in Italy, France and England. He established and co-edits Urbanities: Journal of Urban Ethnography and co-founded and presides over the not-for-profit association, International Urban Symposium-IUS. He currently leads a multidisciplinary project on legitimacy.

Notes

1 Italo Pardo, ‘Corrupt, Abusive, and Legal: Italian Breaches of the Democratic Contract’, Current Anthropology 59, no. Suppl. 18 (2018): 60–71.

2 See Italo Pardo, ‘Socialist visions, Naples and the Neapolitans: Value, Control, and Representation in the Agency/Structure Relationship’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies 3, no. 1 (1993): 77–98.

3 In 1991 they changed their name to Partito Democratico della Sinistra, PDS (Party of the Democratic Left), In 1998 the PDS was renamed Democratici di Sinistra (DS). In 2007 the DS merged with ex-Christian Democrats, forming the Partito Democratico (PD). They ruled the Naples Region between 2000 and 2010.

4 A smaller yellow hammer-and-sickle on a red background now lay at the root of an oak.

5 See Gian M. Chiocci and Simone Di Meo, De Magistris, il Pubblico Mistero: Biografia non Autorizzata (Catanzaro: Rubbettino, 2013).

6 See Italo Pardo, ‘Between Stereotype and Bad Governance: An Italian Ethnography’, in The Palgrave Handbook on Urban Ethnography, ed. I. Pardo and G. B. Prato (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 35–52.

7 In Naples, their electoral support has withered to 14% and appears to be on a downslope.

8 On this highly contentious approach, see Italo Pardo, Managing Existence in Naples: Morality, Action, and Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). See also Marco Demarco, Bassa Italia: L’Antimeridionalismo della Sinistra Meridionale (Naples: Guida, 2009) and Italo Pardo and Giuliana B. Prato, ‘Introduction: Disconnected Governance and the Crisis of Legitimacy’, in Citizenship and the Legitimacy of Governance, ed. I. Pardo and G. B. Prato (London: Routledge, 2009), 1–23.

9 Italo Pardo and Giuliana B. Prato, ‘Ethnographies of Legitimacy: Methodological and Theoretical Insights’, in Legitimacy: Ethnographic and Theoretical Insights, ed. I. Pardo and G. B. Prato (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 1–25.

10 See Pardo, ‘Between Stereotype and Bad Governance’.

11 See Pardo, ‘Between Stereotype and Bad Governance’; and Giuliana. B. Prato, ‘Rethinking the City as Urban Community: Views from South Europe’, in The Palgrave Handbook on Urban Ethnography, ibid., 53–69.

12 All these parties were on the left of the Italian political spectrum.

13 See Pardo, Elite senza fiducia: ideologie, etiche di potere, legittimità (Catanzaro: Rubbettino, 2001); see also Pardo, Managing Existence in Naples, Ch. 7.

14 See Pardo, ‘Corrupt, Abusive, and Legal’. With specific reference to the funerary field, see Fabrizio Postiglione and Paolo Mosé, ‘Ospedali e pompe funebri: 93 indagati’, Primo Piano, 6 April 2012: https://laiifcampania.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/racket-caro-estinto-93-indagati-06-04-2012.pdf

15 I have discussed the key literature in this debate in Managing Existence in Naples (op. cit.) and in ‘Between Stereotype and Bad Governance’. For a contextual analysis, see Pardo and Prato, ‘Introduction’.

16 Communist MPs presided over key parliamentary commissions and supported various governments, by negotiated abstention. They have been speakers of the lower house (Umberto Terracini 1947–1948; Pietro Ingrao, 1976–1979; Nilde Iotti, 1979–1992; Giorgio Napolitano, 1992–1994; Luciano Violante, 1996–2001; Fausto Bertinotti, 2006–2008; Laura Boldrini, 2013–2018), prime ministers (1998–2000) and presidents of the Republic (2006–2015). This trend has increased since 2007, with the founding of the PD (Democratic Party).

17 See Pardo, Managing Existence in Naples.

18 See Pardo, ‘Socialist Visions, Naples and the Neapolitans’.

19 The political assassination of Giovanni Leone, the then Christian Democrat President of the Republic is exemplary of the many cases of moralizing accusations that turned out to be totally false. Having been at the centre of a huge media campaign accusing him of corruption, in June 1978 Leone resigned in disgrace. Many years later, in 1998, having been proved to be innocent of those accusations, he was belatedly offered an apology by the prominent leftist journalists and politicians who had led the witch hunt against him: (http://www.repubblica.it/online/politica/leone/leone/leone.html).

20 See Pardo, ‘Corrupt, Abusive, and Legal’.

21 Telling examples of this view are found in the journal Micromega-Le Ragioni della Sinistra No 4 1990 and No 3 1994. This view has been comprehensively discredited. See, for instance, Pardo Managing Existence in Naples; Demarco, Bassa Italia; Pardo and Prato (2011) ‘Introduction’, 4–7; and Peter Jones, ‘Experiments in Civil Society in Post-war Urban Sicily: Danilo Dolci and the Case of Partinico 1955–1978’. Urbanities: Journal of Urban Ethnography 6, no. 2 (2016): 53–69.

22 Cf. Pardo, Managing Existence in Naples, Ch. 6.

23 Cf. Antonio Gramsci, Letteratura e Vita Nazionale. Torino: Einaudi (English transl. In D. Forgacs and G. Nowell eds, Antonio Gramsci: Selection from Cultural Writings) (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1966), 216–8.

24 See, for example, Diego Gambetta, Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ed. 1988).

25 See Vincenzo Cuoco, Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione di Napoli (second edition with amendments.Milan: Rizzoli, 1966 [1806]).

26 On this key issue, see Arcibaldo Miller, ‘La realtà della corruzione e l’inadeguatezza normativa’, in Comportamenti Illegittimi e Corruzione, Special Issue of Siluppo Economico, ed. I. Pardo (2000): 139–143 and ‘Corruption between morality and legitimacy in the context of globalization’, in Between Morality and the Law: Corruption, Anthropology and Comparative Societies, ed. I. Pardo (London: Routledge, 2004), 53–67.

27 An example of this view is found in Amato Lamberti, ‘Le facilitazioni ambientali, culturali, economiche e politiche del fenomeno camorra’, in Mafia, ‘Ndrangheta e Camorra, ed. E. Nocifora (Rome: Lavoro, 1982), 53–71.

28 Cf. Pardo, Managing Existence in Naples, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3; and ‘Corrupt, Abusive, and Legal’.

29 Cf. Pardo Managing Existence in Naples, Chapter 5.

30 Pardo ibid., Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.

31 Sudden or accidental deaths and deaths that are refused by the dying require, therefore, special symbolic and ritual care.

32 The importance of this requirement is stressed by the widespread practice of taking the dying home from hospital.

33 These niches can accommodate the remains of several relatives. Wealthier families own chapels built, on council permits, across the cemetery.

34 Cf. Arcibaldo Miller, ‘Misure di prevenzione patrimoniale ed esercizio del credito’. Banca, Borsa e Titoli di Credito 38, no. 3 (1985): 400–1.

35 For an enlightening analysis of this complex aspect of Italian politics and of the illicit practices that it encourages or generates, see Giuliana B. Prato’s seminal essay ‘Political decision-making: Environmentalisms, Ethics and Popular Participation in Italy’, in Environmentalism: The View from Anthropology, ed. K. Milton (London: Routledge, 1993), 174–88. See also her ‘The cherries of the mayor: degrees of morality and responsibility in local Italian administration’, in Morals of Legitimacy: Between Agency and System, ed. I. Pardo (Oxford: Berghahn, 2000), 57–82.

36 Roughly, 1 million lira would equal 516,000 Euros. See Miller Arcibaldo, Istruttoria processo cimiteri (Naples: Tribunale di Napoli, 1981).

37 See Miller, ibid.

38 See Gennaro Costagliola, Sentenza processo cimiteri (Naples: Tribunale di Napoli, 1981).

39 As Miller points out (Istruttoria processo cimiteri): 12, a member of the Trombetta family, who had a criminal past including attempted homicide, enjoyed a certain power in the criminal underworld.

40 Miller, ibid., 19–22.

41 Miller, ibid., 23

42 The gang’s members in the banks had clearly tried and failed to cover their tracks.

43 For an analysis of this case of harassment see Italo Pardo, ‘When Power Lacks Legitimacy: Relations of Politics and Law to Society in Italy’, in Morals of Legitimacy: Between Agency and the System, ed. Pardo (Oxford: Berghahn, 2000), 83–106.

44 In ‘Sociology and law in Italy’ Journal of Law and Society 10, no. 1 (1983): 119–34, Tamar Pitch has documented the explicit and strategized politicization of a large and influential section of the Italian judiciary. The testimony of a former major participant in that strategy makes educative reading: see Sergio D’Angelo, ‘Quell’abbraccio tra PCI e MD che fece scattare Mani pulite’ Il Giornale, 28 November 2013: http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/interni/quellabbraccio-pci-e-md-che-fece-scattare-mani-pulite-971544.html. See also Livio Pepino, ‘Obiettivo 2: Appunti per una storia di magistratura Democratica’, Questione Giustizia 12, no. 1 (2002): 1–35 and Forti con i deboli (Milan: Rizzoli, 2012). Notably, articles 98 and 101 of the Italian Constitution specifically forbid the judiciary to join political parties or have political affiliation.

45 See Arcibaldo Miller, Antonio D’Amato, Alfonso D’Avino, Nunzio Fragliasso, Procedimento relativo ad illeciti penali commessi nella gestione dell’USL 41 tra il 1984 e il 1994 (Naples: Tribunale di Napoli, 1993).

46 See Pardo, ‘When Power Lacks Legitimacy’.

47 See Postiglione and Mosé, ‘Ospedali e pompe funebri’.

48 See Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation (New York: The Free Press, 1947).

49 See Pardo, ‘Between Stereotype and Bad Governance’.

50 Pardo, ‘Between Stereotype and Bad Governance’.

51 See Pardo, ‘Where it Hurts’, 33–52.

52 Among the literature on this critical issue, see Annalisa Chirico, Condannati preventivi: le manette facili di uno stato fuorilegge (Catanzaro: Rubbettino, 2012).

53 Of the many thousand people who were investigated, accused of corruption, tried by media and publicly disgraced, less than half were found guilty and convicted. Several, among the investigated, committed suicide. For example, in Milan 4.520 people were investigated. 3.200 went to trial 1.281 were found guilty and sentenced. Between 1992 and 1994, 32 people who were investigated killed themselves; see Maurizio Crippa, ‘La contabilità di Mani pulite non dimostra la corruzione, ma il fallimento della rivoluzione per via giudiziaria-populista’, Il Foglio, 20 February2017: https://www.ilfoglio.it/cronache/2017/02/20/news/mani-pulite-tangentopoli-i-numeri-di-un-fallimento-121305/.

54 Under Italian law, citizens must be notified that they are under judicial investigation. When public figures are involved, these notifications, called ‘avvisi di garanzia’, are often leaked to the media.

55 See Jane Schneider, ‘Fifty Years of Mafia Corruption and Anti-mafia Reform’, Current Anthropology 59, no. Suppl. 18 (2018): 16–27.

56 Miller et al., Procedimento relativo ad illeciti penali commessi nella gestione dell’USL 41 tra il 1984 e il 1994.

57 On this important problem, see Miller, ‘La realtà della corruzione e l’inadeguatezza normative’ and Alfonso D’Avino, ‘L’accertamento della corruzione: limiti e problem’, in Comportamenti illegittimi e corruzione, ibid: 129–134.

58 See Chirico, Condannati preventivi.

59 See Gianni Barbacetto, Peter Gomez, Marco Travaglio, Mani pulite-25 anni dopo (Rome: Paper First, 2017). See Pardo, ‘Where it Hurts’ and ‘Corrupt, Abusive and Legal’.

60 For lack of space, I do not discuss actions that take place at the grassroots and that are officially illegal but are seen as legitimate by the actors and their significant others. I refer the reader to my separate works; for example, Managing Existence in Naples, and ‘Between Stereotype and Bad Governance’.

61 Cf. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978 [1922]): Chapter 10. For recent debate on legitimacy, see Pardo and Prato, Legitimacy.

62 Ever since, I have carried out periodical field trips.

63 See Pardo, ‘Between Stereotype and Bad Governance’ and ‘Corrupt, Abusive and Legal’.

64 This penetration was the result of a long-term strategy, whose beginning I outlined earlier.

65 See Mimmo Della Corte, Bassolino: Amici e Compagni (Naples: Controcorrente, 2007) and Marco Demarco, L’altra metà della storia: Spunti e Riflessioni su Napoli da Lauro a Bassolino (Naples: Guida, 2007).

66 For example, the cost of consultancies relating to the waste affair amounts to almost 12 million US dollars. In some cases, highly paid consultancies were pointless.

67 See, for example, Della Corte, Bassolino, 39–53 and 143–7.

68 Cf. Max Weber, ‘Politics as vocation’, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London: Routledge, 1974), 95.

69 Cf. Prato, ‘The Cherries of the Mayor’, 79.

70 Cf. Della Corte, Bassolino, Ch. 4; and Demarco, L’altra metà della storia, 194–97.

71 Similar cases abound. See, for example, Paolo Cuozzo, ‘Contratti per 27 staffisti alla Città Metropolitana: caos nel PD e a destra’, Corriere del Mezzogiorno, 30 August 2017: https://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/napoli/cronaca/17_agosto_30/contratti-27-staffisti-citta-metropolitana-caos-pd-destra-ea0bbc20-8d48-11e7-8919-aa65ea06f883.shtml.

72 On this key concept, see Lon L. Fuller, The Rationality of Law (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964) and Michael Saltman, ‘“The Law is a Ass”: An Anthropological Appraisal’, in Reason and Morality, ed. J. Overing (London: Tavistock, 1985), 226–39.

73 See Miller, ‘Corruption between Morality and Legitimacy in the Context of Globalization’.

74 See Brian C. Smith, Bureaucracy and Political Power (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1987); David Beetham, Bureaucracy (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987); Pardo, Managing Existence in Naples, Ch. 6; and Prato, ‘The Cherries of the Mayor’.

75 See Prato, ‘Political Decision-making’ and ‘The Cherries of the Mayor’.

76 See Adriana Pollice, ‘Napoli a rischio dissesto’, Il Manifesto, 8 March 2018.

77 Pardo and Prato, ‘Ethnographies of Legitimacy’.

78 Pardo, ‘When Power Lacks Legitimacy.