Not just random fatalism, but also greater acceptance of the idea that individuals can pay authorities not to enforce the vast and unknowable system of laws.
Italy is not corrupt enough for this. The law is more or less applied (more or less also depending on the region) but in a random, chaotic, occasional fashion, because an uniform application is really impossible. It's a bit like the idea of sin. You shouldn't do it, but human nature is what it is. Provided you keep within certain limits.
You are much more familiar with the situation in Italy than I am. My comment was based on Codes of the Underworld (Diego Gambetta, 2009, Princeton University Press). On page 70, he says:
"The wider the range of possible transgressions, the greater the amount of potential information available for mutual blackmailing... Italy is a country with a high level of corruption that has proved hard to explain...Italy has in excess of 100,000 laws and regulations...The probability of living a life, indeed of going through the day, without incurring at least one violation must be virtually zero for Italians... It seems plausible therefore to hypothesize that the high levels of corruption in Italy could depend on the fact that everybody has some dirt on everybody else."
