Political Capitalism and Rent-Seeking

Abstract

Political capitalism is an economic and political system in which the economic and political elite cooperate for their mutual benefit. Rent-seeking is one of the mechanisms that the elite use to generate gains to themselves at the expense of the masses. Analyzing rent-seeking within the political capitalism framework yields insights about the rent-seeking process. There is a barrier to entry in rent-seeking process which reduces competition for rents and increases the return to the rent-seeking group. This produces a net gain that recipients of rents—the economic elite—share with the political elite for their mutual benefit. One result is that rent-seeking losses are smaller than would be possible in the traditional theory. When such limits on rent-seeking are ineffective and discriminatory, massive rent-seeking can occur which dissipates the benefits of rent-seeking and generates the kind of losses Krueger (1974) discussed in her classic article.