A drought in France in 1788 resulted in widespread crop failure (pdf) and soaring food prices, which historians believe stoked the French revolution of the following year. More recently, four years of drought in Syria between 2006 and 2010 created mass unemployment, contributing to the civil war that rages to this day. [...]
The Mafia first appeared in Sicily around 1860, taking advantage of the island’s weak regional government and its distance from Rome to run local protection rackets. For decades, the organization was made up of unremarkable criminals, concentrated around Palermo, the provincial capital. That changed dramatically in 1893, a year of severe drought in the region, according to research (pdf) from Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economist, and his co-researchers, Giacomo De Luca of the University of York, and Giuseppe De Feo Strathclyde Business School, in Glasgow.
The study, released as a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (which means it hasn’t yet been reviewed by other academics) argues that Sicilian peasants were already vulnerable before the draught. Most either rented small plots of land or worked as day laborers at the mercy of the elites who controlled much of the farming estates in Sicily. The drought, which followed a bad harvest the year before, cut the island’s wheat crop in half and similarly crippled olive oil, wine, and barley production. In some regions, 1983’s agricultural production was as much as 65% lower in 1893 than in recent years, according to the paper. [...]
That resulted in weakened local governments, which had serious, long-term negative consequences for Sicily’s economy and the effectiveness of the island’s institutions, the researchers found. For example, in regions where Mafia presence increased from 1 to 2 on their index from 1885 to 1900, literacy fell about 10% by 1921, and high school completion 33% by 1961. The researchers also found that the rise of the Mafia is correlated with an increase in infant mortality and in reduced spending on public infrastructure like water delivery. Weak states are unable to provide public goods, the authors write, and “one of the many factors holding back the development of local state capacity is the impact of various criminal organizations. None is perhaps as famous as the Sicilian Mafia.”
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