Politics makes strange bedfellows, including alliances of profiteers and moralists who lobby for the same regulations, but for vastly different reasons. Whether such coalitions promote alcohol prohibition (as did the bootleggers and Baptists to whom similar unholy alliances are likened), tobacco restrictions, NAFTA, or climate-change policies, political entrepreneurs are the glue that holds them together.
Bootleggers, Baptists, and Political Entrepreneurs
Key Players in the Rational Game and Morality Play of Regulatory Politics
By Randy Simmons, Diana W. Thomas, Ryan M. Yonk
This
article
appeared in
the Winter 2010/11 issue of The Independent Review.
Bureaucracy and GovernmentClimate ChangeEconomyEnergy and the EnvironmentEnvironmental Law and RegulationGovernment and PoliticsLaw and LibertyPolitical TheoryPublic Choice
Other Independent Review articles by Randy Simmons | |
Fall 2015 | Tapping Water Markets |
Spring 1999 | Fixing the Endangered Species Act |
Winter 1998/99 | The Endangered Species Act: Whos Saving What? |
Other Independent Review articles by Diana W. Thomas | |
Winter 2022/23 | Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class |
Spring 2018 | The Rise of the Regulatory State: Institutional Entrepreneurship and the Decline of Markets for Blood |
Other Independent Review articles by Ryan M. Yonk | |
Summer 2017 | From Equality and the Rule of Law to the Collapse of Egalitarianism |