{"title":"Investigating the dynamics of yakuza violence using multilevel network analysis","authors":"Niles Breuer, Martina Baradel","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.001","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the structure of the yakuza – the Japanese mafia – and the patterns of violence between local yakuza groups using a novel dataset of yakuza-on-yakuza conflict throughout Japan between 2014 and 2019. We define new multilevel temporal reciprocity measures and apply a multilevel exponential random graph model to investigate the structure of yakuza violence. We find low levels of retaliation and complex ‘cascading’ conflict structures and that yakuza syndicates act as cohesive organizations that can constrain the actions of their member groups. This research contributes to the understanding of the yakuza’s structure and how violent conflict occurs within organized crime groups.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 14-26"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Networks","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378873325000103","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper investigates the structure of the yakuza – the Japanese mafia – and the patterns of violence between local yakuza groups using a novel dataset of yakuza-on-yakuza conflict throughout Japan between 2014 and 2019. We define new multilevel temporal reciprocity measures and apply a multilevel exponential random graph model to investigate the structure of yakuza violence. We find low levels of retaliation and complex ‘cascading’ conflict structures and that yakuza syndicates act as cohesive organizations that can constrain the actions of their member groups. This research contributes to the understanding of the yakuza’s structure and how violent conflict occurs within organized crime groups.
期刊介绍:
Social Networks is an interdisciplinary and international quarterly. It provides a common forum for representatives of anthropology, sociology, history, social psychology, political science, human geography, biology, economics, communications science and other disciplines who share an interest in the study of the empirical structure of social relations and associations that may be expressed in network form. It publishes both theoretical and substantive papers. Critical reviews of major theoretical or methodological approaches using the notion of networks in the analysis of social behaviour are also included, as are reviews of recent books dealing with social networks and social structure.