(Well over 10 years ago, a friend who had a tenure-track position in
Columbia University's sociology department did not have his contract
renewed after Charles Tilly took over the department and began putting
his own people into the newly vacated positions. My friend was totally
outraged and decided to switch careers. He compared Tilly's behavior to
Tony Soprano's.)
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee256
Criminal Incompetence
August 26, 2009
By Scott McLemee
About a year ago, one of my distant relatives found himself in trouble
with the law, and not for the first time. He had allegedly stabbed
somebody in the course of a dispute over certain business matters, and
so had to go on the run. The police had a thorough description of him,
from sustained acquaintance, which they provided to local newspapers.
The most memorable fact was that he had numerous tattoos, including the
ones on his forehead, over each eye. He was eventually tracked down in a
nearby state. The stab-ee declined to press charges, and everyone lived
happily ever after.
(clip)
A woman in Canada learned that there was a business in the American
Southwest called Guns for Hire. She did not realize that it was a
theatrical group that specialized in reenactments of Old Western
shoot-outs and the like. She called its office to try to arrange the
disposal of her husband. (This is an example of what is sometimes called
"an imperfect market created by differences of information.")
But such problems do not emerge only along the boundary separating
civilians and professional hoods. "Criminals embody homo economicus at
his rawest," writes Gambetta, "and they know it. In keeping with the
evidence that people who are untrustworthy are also likely to think that
others are untrustworthy, criminals are more inclined to distrust each
other than ordinary people do." In a subculture where dishonesty is the
norm and participants have no recourse to mediation by the state, it is
especially difficult to communicate trustworthiness and reliability to
one's potential peers or clients.
On that score, Gambatta makes a fascinating and rather counterintuitive
argument about the role that gross incompetence plays in organized crime
-- and as a brief discussion in one chapter suggests, sometimes in
academic life, at least in Italy.
"An unexpected result of my research on the mafia," he writes, "was to
find out that mafiosi are quite incompetent at doing anything" other
than shaking down legitimate businesses and enforcing trade agreements
among smaller-scale hoodlums. "Mafiosi are good at intimidation and
stick to it.... They let the professionals and the entrepreneurs take
care of the actual business operations."
Rather than getting involved in running a restaurant or dealing drugs,
they joke about their cluelessness in such things and simply collect
payment for "protection." But this professed incompetence (evidently
quite well-demonstrated on the rare occasions that a mafioso tries to go
legit) makes them strangely "trustworthy" to those using their services:
"If [mobsters] showed any competence at it, their clients would fear
that they might just take over."
Gambetta argues that something similar takes place among the baroni
(barons) who oversee the selection committees involved in Italian
academic promotions. While some fields are more meritocratic than
others, he says, the struggle for advancement involves a great deal of
horse trading. "The barons operate on the basis of a pact of
reciprocity, which requires a lot of trust, for debts are repaid years
later. Debts and credits are even passed on from generation to
generation within a professor's 'lineage,' and professors close to
retirement are excluded from the current deals, for they will not be
around long enough to return favors."
The most powerful figures in this system, says Gambetta, tend to be the
least intellectually distinguished. They do little research, publish
rarely, and at best are derivative of "some foreign author on whose fame
they hope to ride.... Also, and this is what is the most intriguing,
they do not try to hide their weakness. One has the impression that they
almost flaunt it in personal contacts."
Well, one also has the impression that the author is here on the verge
of writing a satirical novel. But a friend who is interested in both the
politics and academic life of Italy tells me that this account is all
too recognizably accurate in some fields. Gambetta calls the system "an
academic kakistocracy, or government by the worst," which is definitely
an expression that could catch on.
It may seem like a tangent from comparative criminology. But Gambetta
argues that the cheerful incompetence of the baroni is akin to the
mafioso's way of signaling that he can be "trusted" within his narrowly
predatory limits
"Being incompetent and displaying it," he writes, "conveys the message
*I will not run away, for I have no strong legs to run anywhere else.*
In a corrupt academic market, being good at and interested in one's own
research, by contrast, signal a potential for a career independent of
corrupt reciprocity.... In the Italian academic world, the kakistrocrats
are those who best assure others by displaying, through lack of
competence and lack of interest in research, that they will comply with
the pacts."
It would be shocking, simply shocking, however, if anyone suggested this
was not strictly an Italian problem.
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