Ordinary vulnerabilities and antimafia intervention. A case of municipal dissolution beyond mafia strongholds

The dissolution of municipal councils for mafia infiltration is a key instrument of Italian antimafia policy. While most dissolutions have occurred in regions of long-standing mafia presence, less attention has been paid to cases emerging in territories not traditionally associated with mafia dynamics. This article examines the 2020 dissolution of the municipal council of Saint-Pierre, a small municipality in the Aosta Valley (Italy), as a revelatory case for understanding how exposure to mafia influence can take shape in such contexts. Drawing on documentary sources, administrative records, judicial materials, media coverage, and semi-structured interviews, the analysis shows that the conditions leading to dissolution did not stem from consolidated criminal control. Rather, they developed through the accumulation of ordinary administrative and political vulnerabilities, including limited capacity, organizational instability, and weak political oversight. These vulnerabilities created conditions of exposure that later acquired institutional relevance when subjected to preventive scrutiny. By showing how ordinary governance fragilities both enable forms of mafia influence and are redefined through antimafia intervention, the article advances a context-centred understanding of the dynamic interplay between mafia exposure and preventive state action in settings newly recognized as exposed.