Organized crime dominated whole regions politically, socially, and economically by the 1980s. In Campania and Naples the Camorra controlled whole swaths of the urban landscape and the underground economy. Several politicians were linked to the Camorra when it siphoned off huge sums of state relief funding after the 1980 earthquake. The ’Ndranghetta organization in Calabria specialized in kidnappings and drug smuggling. In Puglia the Nuova Sacra Corona held sway, while the Mafia dominated Sicily. In Sardinia, bandits continued to operate in some regions, and, although anti-kidnapping laws had been somewhat effective, high-profile kidnappings dominated the news for months.

In addition, organized crime used violence to block enforcement of environmental protection laws and the establishment of public parks (which reduced opportunities for illegal construction) in Sicily and Sardinia in particular. Throughout the south, illegal construction was rife, and successive government amnesties—the last in 1994—further encouraged these builders. It was only after 1996 that the state began to act seriously against illegal construction, and it demolished houses and villas in natural parks in Sicily and Rome.

During the mid-1980s the state and civil society began to move, finally, against the hegemonic control of organized crime. After a series of high-profile Mafia assassinations of major political and institutional figures, above all prefect-general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa (and his wife) in Palermo in 1982, local elites began to evolve a strategy for combating the Mafia. A key Mafia figure, Tommaso Buscetta, turned state’s evidence in 1984 in defiance of the organization’s code of silence. Buscetta was the first to provide detailed information on the workings and plans of the Mafia. His testimony led to hundreds of arrests of key Mafia leaders and henchmen. Soon other mafiosi turned state’s evidence that helped prosecutors win convictions of important Mafia bosses. In addition, the Mafia families became involved in a damaging internal war in the 1980s that left more than 1,000 dead. Finally, there were moves from within the Christian Democratic Party itself against the Mafia after the murder in 1980 of the Christian Democratic Sicilian regional president Piersanti Mattarella, a traditional politician who had decided to lead a campaign against corruption in Sicily. The state passed strong anti-Mafia laws for the first time, and several trials in 1986 condemned hundreds of mafiosi to long prison sentences.

The Mafia took its revenge in devastating yet counterproductive fashion. In 1992 Judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who had both presided over anti-Mafia trials, were killed in horrific bomb attacks that left another nine people (bodyguards and relatives) dead. These murders galvanized the anti-Mafia movement. Even parliament—which had been stalled on the election of a new president, leaving Italy in a sort of power vacuum—came out of its stupor to elect Oscar Luigi Scalfaro in the aftermath of the Falcone bombing.

Beginning in 1993, authorities arrested several remaining key Mafia figures. Corruption investigations in the early 1990s permitted the prosecution of previously immune political figures who had links to the Mafia. In 1993 seven-time prime minister Guilio Andreotti was charged with collusion with the Mafia, a move that shook the political system to its foundations, although Andreotti was later absolved after a long and dramatic trial. Giancarlo Caselli continued the work of Falcone and Borsellino. Leoluca Orlando, an anti-Mafia campaigner, was elected mayor of Palermo in 1993 and 1997 with huge majorities. The city and the region began to stabilize, although no one believed that the Mafia had been entirely defeated. In Naples as well, the judges began to break down the powerful Camorra organizations, which were engaged in a bloody internal civil war that had left hundreds of young people dead. Leading politicians and Camorra bosses were arrested and charged.

In the late 1990s, however, the Mafia appeared to be making something of a comeback, although it seemed to have abandoned the tactics of direct confrontation with the state. The right—and in particular the new party called Forza Italia (“Go Italy”), led by Silvio Berlusconi—made continual attacks on anti-Mafia judges and the use of supergrass evidence (ex-mafiosi who turn state’s evidence), especially after leading members of Forza Italia itself were implicated in Mafia corruption. These attacks resulted in the ouster of one of the most prominent anti-Mafia judges, Giancarlo Caselli, in 1999. These events suggested a return to previous patterns of government noninterference, albeit much less overt than in the past.