Sicilian Meta-Network Essay -- Social Issues, Mafioso Families

Mafioso families mystify ne twainrk structures that be distinct from those in representative hierarchical organizationsthey are cellular and distributed. While near politicians and law enforcement agents have at least an intuitive understanding of hierarchies and how to affect their behavior, they have less(prenominal) of an understanding of how to even go about reasoning about energizing networked organizations (Ronfelt and Arquilla, 2001). It is even more difficult to understand how such networks will evolve, change, line up and how they arsehole be destabilized. Clearly social network analysis can be applied to the study of covert networks (Sparrow, 1991). However, it would be a demerit to assume that in order to understand these networks we just need to plug into the dots and then isolate the mainstay actors who are a lot defined in terms of their centrality in the network. To an extent, this is right, as in the case of bridging members embedded within patron-client n etworks. However, within covert networks such as Cosa Nostra, this assumption belies the difficulty of connecting the dots in terms of mining vast quantities of reading, pattern matching on characteristics for mafiosi who often go under multiple aliases, and still ending up with information the may be intentionally misleading, inaccurate, out-of-date, and incomplete. Further, this belies the difficulty in knowing who is the most central when you have at best only a sample distribution of the network.Finally, and critically, this approach does not contend with the most pressing problemthe underlying network is dynamic. Just because you isolate a key actor forthwith does not mean that the network will be destabilized and unable to respond. Rather, it is possible, that single out such an actor may have... ...ertise is critical. This is particularly applicable to Cosa Nostra considering that, according to Gambetta, mafiosi are highly specialized according to specific tasks. (Gambe tta 67)There are two key themes underlying these results. First, it is easier to determine how to impact the performance or the full point of information through an organization than it is to determine exactly how it will adapt. It is easier to destabilize a network than to determine what new goals it will form or new tasks it will take on. This is a function of our lack of experience about the processes of adaptation other than learning. Second, the relative impact of destabilization strategies powerfully depends on the underlying organizational architecture, that is, on the meta-network itself. As such, a key interpretation of these results is in terms of destabilizing different classes of networks.