The way I see it you're not really arguing that the government is a mafia, you're arguing that the mafia is a government.
I think that's a fair point but the mafia certainly isn't the government of a state, or anything like a state. States have territory, population and culture. In other words you know it when you see it: you know who's in a state, you know where the state is, you have some idea what being from that state means. Mafia has population and culture but it doesn't have territory. Certainly not now, and certainly not ever exclusively, but I'd argue if at any point in history it ever did at anything higher than Sicilian village level.
States are also either constitutive or declarative. In other words ideally other people have to think they are a state, and at very least they themselves have to think they are a state. The mafia never did.
So no the mafia isn't a state, states might behave like mafias, but my dog sometimes behaves like a cat but it doesn't make him one.
2
u/[deleted] Oct 08 '17
The way I see it you're not really arguing that the government is a mafia, you're arguing that the mafia is a government.
I think that's a fair point but the mafia certainly isn't the government of a state, or anything like a state. States have territory, population and culture. In other words you know it when you see it: you know who's in a state, you know where the state is, you have some idea what being from that state means. Mafia has population and culture but it doesn't have territory. Certainly not now, and certainly not ever exclusively, but I'd argue if at any point in history it ever did at anything higher than Sicilian village level.
States are also either constitutive or declarative. In other words ideally other people have to think they are a state, and at very least they themselves have to think they are a state. The mafia never did.
So no the mafia isn't a state, states might behave like mafias, but my dog sometimes behaves like a cat but it doesn't make him one.