The north is sophisticated, cosmopolitan, industrialized, and has tons of arable farmland and just generally money running through it. Culturally it's more French / white European.

The south has very little arable land, it is rocky and hilly. It does not lend itself well to large-scale agriculture. It was largely ruled in a feudal system for a very very long time, which then collapsed into the peasant families each being given land ownership of plots too small to sustain a family.

It has also been a target of conquering by Greeks, Ottoman Turks, and many many many more cultures due to its critical location for shipping lanes - so it's been sort "ran over" too many times to count.

The fact that the real power structure has turned over so many times has led to lots of very very localized, unofficial power structures that represent sort of local "fiefdoms" which exist outside of the modern governmental structures. Subsequently, it has built its own mythology of being "unconquerable" or "ungovernable" and not really a part of "Italy" - where "Italy" is seen as an outside power which builds into the mythology that helps the mafioso gain and retain control.

Edit: for very enjoyable (and highly regarded) novel that gets at the mafioso / Southern mythology about this, I highly recommend Black Souls.

One should not forget the Kingdom of Two Sicilies was quite wealthy and advanced at the time of the Italian Reunification, but crumbled shortly afterwards.

There was a big wealth transfer South to North. Nonetheless, it's still a lovely place.

Sicily was great when it was governed by the Normands but that didn't last for a long time.

I live now in Switzerland and I am studying its history. It seems one of the reason of Switzerland prosperity and order was they never got a prince or a king but cities were autonomously governing themselves.

It may be not what we hope for, but isn't it pretty much the same as what happens when the government builds it? I mean, the "projects" aren't exactly the shining example of what "we might hope for" either. It looks like this way of solving the problem is bound to fail whoever tries it - be it the well-intentioned government or the mafia.

If the alternative to slums is tent cities, I hope for slums.

Well, the whole point of the Mafia is that it's a sort of reactionary movement to defeudalisation/uniformisation in places that are far away from where the power centralizes (the exact same reason why Yakuza started after the unification and why a lot of gangsters are from Kyushu).

It also pisses me off that people use the word mafia inappropriately, for example "Russian Mafia" or "Moroccan Mafia" have no meaning, these are not feudal organization like Mafia or Yakuza

It's not exactly the same, because

> - yeah, but he can also cut you down in the street without due process, doesn't care about your opinion, and might enforce ius primae noctis, without any recourse.

If the mafioso goes too far they lose the support of the locals.

I mean, sure, the population has no recourse when some henchman rapes some bride, but the organisation's management usually enforce their rules on their own members rigourously and violently, too.

In the case of losing what little support they have with no profit involved, it's not hard to see why these organisations don't actually allow Droit De Signeur.

They're a business, first and foremost. Allow, even encourage, violence to increase profits? Sure! Use violence just for kicks? Probably not.

I'm genuinely curious what the difference is according to you.

From where I'm standing I sometimes struggle to see the difference between my government and a mafia. They behave in uncanny similar ways.