Jamaican Dons, Italian Godfathers and the Chances of a ‘Reversible Destiny’
| Author | Joseph L. Soeters,Hume N. Johnson |
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00682.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00682.x
Jamaican Dons, Italian Godfathers and the
Chances of a ‘Reversible Destiny’
Hume N. Johnson
Joseph L. Soeters
University of Waikato
Netherlands Defence Academy/University of Tilburg
For close to 50 years, so-called ‘dons’ have positioned themselves as civic leaders in Jamaica, gaining
acceptance among poor urban communities and (tacit) political recognition in the wider society. The
dons’ systematic, coercive organisation of the ghetto community and the counter-hegemonic, executive-
style bureaucracy and culture entrenched here resembles the ‘godfather’-led criminal culture and power
of the (Italian) Mafia. However, over the last ten years the Mafia has faced a considerable decline in its
omnipotence, due to increased state intervention and resistance within civil society, particularly by
women in the local Italian communities. This article attempts to ascertain if such a ‘reversible destiny’ is
also thinkable in Jamaica.
International concern in recent years with a range of deviant political and social
phenomena (terrorism, organised crime, migration) has coincided with scholarly
anxiety over emerging threats to world order and the consequent risks to the
power and authority of the contemporary state. Political challenges to the exclu-
sivity of state authority have mainly arisen from a wide assemblage of ‘rogue
actors’ – Mafias, terrorists, criminal gangs and warlords. Many of these groups not
only establish large informal organisations and governing structures with their
own economic, security and administrative apparatuses, but they pervade whole
territories within the border lands of many countries throughout the world.
Examples include al Qa’eda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the spread of orga-
nised crime inside and outside Europe (Italy, Russia, Albania, China and Japan),
drug cartels and rebels in Colombia and Mexico, the private militias operating in
places such as Sudan, Solomon Islands, Democratic Republic of the Congo and
Haiti, as well as the criminal gangs in the Brazilian favelas. On account of existing
within a subculture with their own norms, rules and ways of dispensing justice,
these networks of ‘outlaws’ are seen as powerful ‘alternate authorities’ which are
giving a social basis to political order (and disorder) in many societies (Kaplan,
2000; Mason, 2005; Rapley, 2006; Soeters, 2005; Strange, 1996; UNDP, 1994).
In this vein, social science scholars in Jamaica have been increasingly preoccupied
with the emergence of ‘community dons’ and their significance for the public
safety and security dilemma confronting the Jamaican state (Charles, 2002;
Harriot, 2003; Price, 2004; Rapley, 2003). Jamaica’s dons are considered to be a
prime example of ‘rogue leadership’ in the civil sphere. ‘Rogue leaders’ in civil
society evolve where and when the state is too weak or too involved with other
© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
J A M A I C A N D O N S A N D I TA L I A N G O D FAT H E R S
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priorities to control the monopoly of violence and ensure good governance,
safety and public order in everyday life.Within the global context, Jamaican dons
are therefore not unique in using illegitimate violence to gain power and exercise
control of the everyday life and politics in their communities. To get a better
understanding of Jamaican donmanship, Jamaica’s dons may be compared with
the ‘godfather’-like extra-legal culture of the Mafia in Italy and elsewhere, the
USA in particular.1 In this article we aim to elaborate this comparison. By
delineating the culture of donmanship in Jamaica within the context of the global
Mafia phenomenon, we argue that the character of the social organisation over
which Mafia dons preside handicaps ‘civil’ leadership at the local community
level, foregrounds ‘rogue leadership’ and frustrates the development of civil norms
and civil politics.
However, pursuing the comparison a bit further may also offer some hope of a
better future. Over the last decade, the Mafia in Italy – and in the USA – has
encountered a serious decline of its power ( Jamieson, 2000; Reuter, 1995;
Schneider and Schneider, 2005; 2003). One even speaks of a ‘reversible destiny’ for
the communities in those nations, for instance in Italian regions like Sicily and
Calabria. One may wonder if those fairly new developments in Italy and the USA
may show the way to future improvements with respect to ‘rogue leadership’ in
Jamaica. This is the fundamental question we address in the article. To reach for
a substantiated answer, we first analyse the rise of the Mafia, subsequently define
Jamaican donmanship, then scrutinise the conditions that led to the decline of
Mafia power in Italy and the USA, and finally we attempt to appreciate if and
how these conditions may apply to Jamaican society, now or in the near future.
As a point of departure, we make a short methodological note. This article uses
the commonalities and differences in culture, political dynamics and leadership
which exist between the Mafia and Jamaican dons to theorise the development
of outlaw governance in the civil community. Although there is a multiplicity
of Mafia groups in existence – Russian, Albanian and American – we rely heavily
on the data of the Italian Mafia to carve out parallels with the Jamaican case. This
is not only because the Mafia had its origins in Italy, but – for a long time – it has
also been the ‘winning model’ of organised crime in the world (Blok, 2001;
Jamieson, 2000; Spotts and Wieser, 1986). This article therefore deals with the
emergence of alternative sovereign spaces, outlaw forms of community gover-
nance and their apparent institutionalisation in different national and political
contexts. No two societies are more different in terms of size, political institutions,
political culture, economic structure and history than Jamaica and Italy. Conse-
quently, even while we draw comparisons between these two settings, which is a
so-called ‘most dissimilar’ comparative strategy (Przeworski and Teune, 1970), we
are aware that this comparative effort is far from robust. Nonetheless, we think
that this approach will help us to understand the patterns that enable ‘rogue
leadership’ in civil society to occur and also to be marginalised and repressed.
Such patterns may point to developments occurring on a worldwide scale.
© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008, 56(1)
168
H U M E N. J O H N S O N A N D J O S E P H L . S O E T E R S
The Politics of the (Italian) Mafia
The ‘Mafia’ originally referred to a loose confederation of Sicilian ‘families’ or
‘brotherhoods’, who established themselves as law enforcement squads in western
Sicily, tenuously during the reign of the Neapolitan kingdom of the Two Sicilies
in the early nineteenth century, and forcefully after the Unification of Italy in
1860. The Mafia claimed to be a force for law and order that the governing
authority in Naples and after 1870 in Rome could not ensure. Members of the
Mafia did not consider themselves as criminals; indeed they were regarded by the
populace as ‘protectors’, hence their entrenchment in the social fabric of a local
area. The most affected locales were the rural towns of the interior zone of large
estates or latifundia and the villages and hamlets near Palermo, the regional
capital, given over to the commercial development of orchard crops ( Blok, 2001).
This ‘protector’ role has persisted until very recently in the Mafia’s ‘guardianship’
over large sections of southern Italian territory. The contemporary Mafia is
characterised by two significant developments: (1) its geographic spread not only
throughout Italy but its transnational linkages throughout Europe, North and
South America as well as Asia (although their presence here is recent and minor
by comparison); (2) the organisation’s infiltration of legitimate business activities.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, drug trafficking alone garnered staggering
sums. These monies have been channelled into legitimate enterprises: vacation
resorts, restaurants, construction firms and transportation companies (Blok, 2001;
Jamieson, 2000; Spotts and Wieser, 1986).
In general, the Mafia’s activities include the gamut of extra-legality: extortion,
usury, skimming public works contracts, trafficking drugs, arms, contraband
cigarettes, money laundering and the reinvestment of the illicit profits. Indeed,
although it directly or indirectly acquires the management of businesses, conces-
sions, authorisations, public contracts and public services, extortion is at the heart
of the Mafia’s trade and the key to its power (Spotts and Wieser, 1986, p. 188;
compare Blok, 2001; Jamieson, 2000; Stille, 1995). The Mafia operates protection
rackets over almost every sort of commercial activity, extorting pay-offs from some
10,000 large and small enterprises. This ‘revenue’ provides employment for the
lower cadres (of the Mafia structure), a stable income to support the families of
those imprisoned and, crucially, represents a form of social control through which
economic and political influence can be exerted over a given territory. Of analytic
purchase here is not so much the tight grip that extra-legal forces have on national
economies, but the hegemony they claim over crucial areas of social life.
The Mafia’s construction of enduring social structures...
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