Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships

by Dario Maestripieri

  In the 1980s, the decade when I turned eighteen, mandatory military service was not appealing to anyone. Italy was not at war, and there was no patriotic urge to enroll in the armed forces and protect the country. The military service provided no opportunity to earn money (the soldier’s per diem was ridiculously low), to learn useful new skills, or to visit interesting locations. It was a major disruption of one’s life that would be at best a gigantic waste of time and at worst a nightmare of stress and abuse. Being drafted into the Army and sent to a base in the mountains of northern Italy, for example, near the border between Italy and the former Yugoslavia, was considered the kiss of death. In the middle of nowhere, you had to march all day and stand guard all night, five nights a week. In addition, as a new recruit, you were physically, emotionally, and sexually harassed by the perversely named nonni (Italian for “grandparents”)—senior soldiers near the end of their term—the way you might be harassed by career criminals in a prison in the Bronx. By comparison, service in the Air Force wasn’t so bad. The Italian Air Force is small, poorly equipped, and has no real military power. Its main function is to provide logistical support to the Army and some civilian organizations. Many Air Force bases are located in nice urban areas, and soldiers do little or no military training. They can work office hours on the base and go home to sleep, are not required to march or be night guards, and are not harassed by nonni.

  Draft assignments are supposedly made randomly. My friends and I used to joke that there must be a secret room in the Ministry of Defense in which a giant computer spits out draft postcards with random pairings between people’s names and assignments, as in a lottery. Everyone knew, however, that the lottery was rigged. There were raccomandazioni. We imagined that every day a mysterious red telephone in the computer room rang and a voice on the other side said, “I recommend that Mario Rossi be permanently exempted from his military service due to a pathological heart condition” (as a result of raccomandazioni or a lack thereof, those with fake illnesses would be exempted, whereas those with real life-threatening conditions would be drafted), or, “I recommend that Dario Maestripieri be assigned to the Air Force and dispatched to a base in Rome.” The gnome who answered the phone would then remove the name of the recommended individual from the lottery and make sure he got the recommended fate. Raccomandazioni would come in for thousands of young men every year. The other thousands of young men for whom the phone did not ring would simply get the default treatment: they were drafted and dispatched to the border. The family ties of these young men were torn, their education or careers were disrupted, and they were at risk of permanently impaired mental health from the effects of physical and psychological trauma.

  The phone calls transmitting the raccomandazioni were probably made from offices on the upper floors of the Ministry of Defense—from high-ranking military officers who routinely gave orders to the gnomes in the computer room. They called to make sure their sons and nephews would either be exempt from service or else get the best possible treatment. These officers also called to recommend the sons and nephews of politicians, businesspeople, family friends, neighbors, or anybody who had a connection with them—or the power to make one.

  After deferring my military service for four years to attend college, I began to panic. My parents were high school math teachers and had no direct connections with the military, the political parties, or big business. One day, however, one of my father’s students—who was probably hoping to get a better grade in math—mentioned to him that her father knew an Army general who owed him a favor. My health was excellent, so trying to obtain a full exemption from the service on medical grounds had seemed a little too daring. I therefore told my father that I wished to do my service in the Air Force and be dispatched to Rome, where I would be stationed on the base across the street from the university and would have time to finish my thesis and spend nights at home. My wish was soon granted. The student’s father called the general, the general made a raccomandazione on my behalf, and exactly one month later I received a postcard informing me that I had been drafted into the Air Force and would be stationed at the Caserma Romagnoli.

  On my first day of service, however, I realized that something was wrong. I had expected that, given my college education, I would get a comfortable assignment in an office, but I found myself among the Air Force car drivers. This was very bad news. While the soldiers assigned to offices worked from nine to five and went home, the drivers worked late into the night taking generals back to their homes, sometimes hundreds of miles out of town. Something had gone wrong. My recommender had requested that I be drafted into the Air Force and dispatched to the base in Rome, but didn’t specify a work assignment. As usual, in the absence of a raccomandazione, one receives the default, which means the worst possible treatment. At the Caserma Romagnoli, the worst possible job was being a driver.

  There was more bad news. On that first day, the new drivers—a group of one hundred losers like me with “incomplete” or sloppy raccomandazioni—were unceremoniously informed that in one month ten of us would be transferred to an Army base in a bad part of town, where we would lose all of our Air Force privileges, including the reprieve from night guard duty and the opportunity to spend the nights at home. We were told that our training sergeant would randomly select ten drivers and forward their names to the captain in charge of the Caserma, who would then give orders for their immediate transfer to the Army base.

  Everybody panicked. Within seconds of this announcement, we were all on the phone with our parents begging for a new raccomandazione that would save us from the transfer to hell. We initially thought that the raccomandazione would have to be made to the captain, but soon discovered that the sergeant wanted to be in on the game as well. The sergeant asked about our parents’ professions and made a list of all of our names and our parents’ jobs. He then hinted that if certain parents intervened on behalf of their sons, their sons would be spared from the transfer to the Army base. It became clear that he wasn’t expecting to be bribed with money—he could have gotten into real trouble for that—but that he would appreciate other tangible favors. So much for random selection.

  When I told the sergeant that my parents were high school teachers, my name quickly dropped to the bottom of his list. The soldier at the top had a father who owned a bank. The sergeant’s son happened to be unemployed, so the soldier’s father gave him a job in his bank. Another soldier had parents who owned a butcher shop. Going back to the earlier story, this was the young man with the steaks and sausages—he brought fresh meat to the sergeant almost every day for one month. The parents of another soldier—the companion of the butcher’s son—owned a pharmacy and offered all kinds of expensive drugs to the sergeant free of charge. While it became clear that these three soldiers had nothing to worry about, things started looking very bleak for my lot. Thankfully I was eventually saved by another raccomandazione. A couple of phone calls were made, and the same general who got me into the Air Force “ordered” the captain at the Caserma Romagnoli not to transfer me to the Army base.

  As these dramatic events were unfolding, I peeked through the window of the captain’s office one day and glimpsed on his desk a list with the names of the one hundred new drivers who had recently arrived at the base, including mine. Next to each name, he had written in red ink the name of the military officer from whom he had received a raccomandazione. There was a lot of red ink on that list, and some drivers had received multiple raccomandazioni from different officers. A number of the recommenders were generals, and the captain had made a note of their rank. Clearly, answering the phone and taking notes on these raccomandazioni was an important aspect of the captain’s job. Missing a call or pissing off the wrong general could have cost the captain his cushy position. As it was, he often left the base riding a powerful Ducati motorcycle and wearing black leather gear—not looking like he was going on any important military missions.

  Luckily for me, next to my name on the captain�
��s list was the name of a five-star general—I finally discovered my recommender’s identity—so in the end I was saved from the unfortunate fate of being transferred to the Army. Not only that, but after a couple of more calls from my sponsor, I obtained a permanent release from all driving duties and spent the rest of my twelve months typing letters in an office. Every day at 5:00 P.M. I walked out of the Caserma and went to work on my thesis or to hang out with my friends. I slept at my parents’ apartment every night and returned to the Caserma the next morning. Not everyone was so lucky. Sadly, there were ten names on the captain’s list with little or no red ink next to them. These brave young men received the default treatment: they were transferred to the Army base and spent the remaining eleven months of their military service in hell.

  Concorsi and Baroni

  As illustrated by this story, the raccomandazione is a key instrument of Italian nepotism. To further demonstrate the inner workings of nepotism in my country I will use a different example, and once again, we start by learning some Italian words: concorsi, baroni, and fregare. Concorsi are nationwide competitions used both to admit college students into graduate programs and to hire new researchers and professors at public universities. Baroni (Italian for “barons”) is a term used to refer to university professors who have great power and influence over student admissions, the hiring of new faculty, and funds for research. To fregare someone means to screw them.

  Until 1980, Italian universities offered only one type of degree, called the laurea, which was a combination of a baccalaureate and a master’s degree; then doctorate programs were introduced. To be considered for admission into a doctoral program, students had to compete in a concorso: their college grades and previous research accomplishments were evaluated, and they took an oral and a written examination. All positions were supported by fellowships, so students competed for both admission and money. This being Italy, the competition—you guessed it—was rigged. The baroni negotiated with one another the number of students they could each admit each year into their programs and who would win the concorsi. Before applications for admission were even received, the baroni would have already decided on the winners. Others were told not to apply and either wait their turn or simply give up the whole thing.

  When it came to admission decisions, family, of course, came first. The baroni admitted their children and other family members directly into their programs or recommended them for admission to other baroni. Baroni also guaranteed admission to their protégés. These were undergraduate students who, thanks to a raccomandazione from their parents, had completed their undergraduate thesis with a barone and, because of their loyalty to him, had been granted the status of extended kin—they had been adopted. Finally, the baroni admitted students who were neither their kin nor their protégés, but strangers for whom they had received raccomandazioni from politicians, business people, or friends and neighbors. As usual, all raccomandazioni were made over the phone so that no traces would remain. Any student who applied for admission but did not fall into the above categories would be turned down by the baroni regardless of his or her academic credentials. My adviser turned down a lot of students without the required family pedigree or raccomandazioni even if they were academically outstanding and he had empty slots in his lab. He had to keep them vacant because his phone could ring at any time with a request to take a student he couldn’t turn down. As a result, most of the students and researchers who worked with him were the sons and daughters of other professors or politicians. So how did I get in there?

  The year I applied for admission into the biology doctorate program at the University of Rome there were eight open slots, and as usual the names of the eight winners had already been agreed upon by the baroni on the admission committee. Mine wasn’t one of them. A couple of weeks before the concorso, however, the National Research Council offered funding to support two additional fellowships. The baroni did not have time to negotiate these two additional positions, so two outsiders who had good résumés and had performed well on the exams—myself and a friend of mine—were admitted. We squeezed in through a crack in the system. Then something funny happened. Even though my friend and I were straight-A students and had already published scientific articles, we couldn’t find a professor who was willing to serve as our adviser. The day the new graduate students were to be assigned to an adviser we sat around a table with a bunch of professors, and each and every one of them, with a great display of embarrassment, made excuses as to why he couldn’t serve as our adviser.

  The truth was that by filling a slot with an outsider without raccomandazioni or the appropriate family pedigree, they might lose an opportunity to admit a family member or the son or daughter of the prime minister into their program the following year. It now became apparent to the baroni that admitting two outsiders into the program had been a big mistake—someone would have to pay the price. Eventually, after some arm-twisting, my friend and I found an adviser. Three years later, however, after I finished my PhD, it was made abundantly clear to me that someone who had entered academia through a crack in the system could not expect to go very far. After doors were shut in my face one too many times, I packed my bags and moved to the United States.

  The PhD students who enter the system normally, through the proper channels, remain in their advisers’ shadow for years until their loyalty is finally rewarded with a permanent position. During these years the protégés spend as little time away from their patrons as possible because their future careers depend on the strength of their personal bonds with them, and they know these bonds must be constantly attended to and nurtured.

  The nepotism that controls admission to graduate programs is nothing compared to what happens when academic jobs and real money are involved. It is common knowledge that all concorsi for full-time researchers and professors at Italian universities, and especially in medical schools, are rigged by the baroni; complaints and appeals by candidates who were unfairly turned down for positions for which they were eminently qualified (in a word, they were fregati) have led to countless criminal investigations and even some convictions for the baroni involved. From these investigations of academic nepotism, it has emerged that the baroni have organized themselves in clans that operate just like the Mafia. They have hierarchies of power with a “boss” at the top, they aim to control entire areas of academia across the country, and they do not hesitate to threaten and intimidate to get what they want. Scandals involving rigged concorsi have received a great deal of media attention in Italy; countless newspaper and magazine articles, and even books, have been written on the subject. Several years ago, the weekly news magazine L’Espresso devoted a cover article—entitled “The Baroni’s Mafia”—to academic nepotism in Italy and reviewed some of the best-known scandals.1

  Among the incidents recounted in the article, a few are particularly noteworthy. For example, twenty-five new professor positions in otorinolangoiatry were filled in universities around Italy in 1988 and 1992. Of these twenty-five new hires, four were the sons of professors who sat on the search committees that examined the candidates. One powerful barone, Dr. Giovanni Motta, appointed his own son, Dr. Gaetano Motta, as a full professor at the age of thirty-two. The father—as the chair of the search committee—himself evaluated his son’s credentials, which included scientific articles published in his father’s department, with his father as a co-author. The senior Dr. Motta then falsified the reports of the examinations to make it look like his son was more qualified and had performed better on the examinations than the other candidates. Dr. Motta and other baroni whose sons were hired in these concorsi were later found guilty of fraud and sentenced to one to two years in jail. Although the hirings were declared null, Dr. Gaetano Motta to this day still holds the professor appointment he illegally obtained in 1992.

  Another case that made the news involved Dr. Roberto Puxeddu, an associate professor at the University of Cagliari. He was appointed by a committee that included two professors who h
ad themselves obtained their faculty positions through a fraudulent concorso chaired by Prof. Paolo Puxeddu, Dr. Roberto Puxeddu’s father and a powerful barone. Again, although the senior barone was later convicted of fraud and his son’s appointment annulled, the son maintains his position at the university. In another case in the medical school of the University of Bari, a professor who became dean left the directorship of his department to his thirty-four-year-old son, who was the only candidate considered for the position. Another dean pressured his university to hire his daughter without even advertising the position and interviewing other candidates.

  The inner workings of the Italian academic mafia were revealed when some university phones were wiretapped and conversations between baroni were recorded by the police. In 2005, Dr. Paolo Rizzon, a professor at the University of Bari, was recorded discussing strategies for manipulating concorsi across Italy. In one such conversation, he negotiated the composition of a favorable search committee for his son, who had applied for a faculty position, and then he negotiated the topic of the essay his son would have to write as part of his examination. Another recorded conversation revealed that a qualified job candidate who competed against the baroni’s protégés was threatened with physical violence by two Mafia hit men if he didn’t withdraw from the concorso. The two hit men were identified by name—both had criminal records. In another recorded conversation, Dr. Rizzon bragged to a colleague that in order to help his son and the relatives of other baroni obtain professorships, he had to be very creative to be able to fregare outsider job candidates whose qualifications were much better than those of the people he helped.

  The qualified job candidates who are fregati by the baroni often leave the country and begin successful careers abroad. In the last twenty to thirty years, tens of thousands of Italian researchers have fled the country. The baroni’s clans continue to operate undisturbed and have absolute control of the Italian academic system. As a result of such nepotism, the Department of Economics at the University of Bari had, at some point, eight professors who shared the same last name: Massari. They were all related. Apparently, this set a new record for Italy; the previous record was six family members in the same department or institution. Of course, when it comes to nepotism, Italian military officers or the baroni of academia are amateurs when compared to politicians, judges, businesspeople, and anyone else who has real power and influence in society.