Politica e criminalità organizzata in Campania dopo il terremoto

The 1980 earthquake represented a watershed moment in the history of the Campania region from different points of view. A central aspect concerns the changes that took place in the political system. The public funds allocated for the reconstruction programme redefined the hierarchy of territorial powers giving new centrality to political intermediation. But another important aspect concerns the changes in the mafia world across the region, with the emergence of new groups and families. These new groups took advantage of the expansion of drug trafficking and showed a particular aptitude for economic activities (both legal or illegal). Drug trafficking and business activities, mainly linked to public funds, became the levers of criminal power during the the 1980s. The combination of these two factors favored the affirmation of exchange relations between the political class and criminal elites, resulting in a very peculiar situation linked to the historical conditions of those years. This contribution proposes to reconstruct the form and substance of these relationships from a diachronic perspective.