Surveys reveal that a majority of Americans believe government is
run for special interests, not public interest. The increased
presence and power of lobbyists in Washington and the excesses of
PAC and campaign contributions, in-kind benefits, and other favors
would seem to indicate a government of weak public servants
corrupted by big private-interest groups.
But as Fred McChesney shows, this perspective affords only a
partial understanding of why private interests are paying, and what
they are paying for. Consider, for example, Citicorp, the nation's
largest banking company, whose registered lobbyists spend most of
their time blocking legislation that could hurt any one of the
company's credit-card, loan, or financial-service operations. What
this scenario suggests, the author argues, is that payments to
politicians are often made not for political favors, but to avoid
political disfavor, that is, as part of a system of political
extortion or "rent extraction."
The basic notion of rent extraction is simple: because the state
can legally take wealth from its citizens, politicians can extort
from private parties payments not to expropriate private wealth. In
that sense, rent (that is, wealth) extraction is "money for
nothing"--money paid in exchange for politicians' inaction. After
constructing this model of wealth extraction, McChesney tests it
with many examples, including several involving routine proposals
of tax legislation, followed by withdrawal for a price. He also
shows how the model applies more generally to regulation. Finally,
he examines how binding contracts are written between private
interests and politicians not to extract wealth.
This book, standingsquarely at the intersection of law,
political science, and economics, vividly illustrates the patterns
of legal extortion underlying the current fabric of interest-group
politics.
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