Abstract
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.
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Comment
By Bruce Yandle
PERC Senior Fellow
Randy Simmons, a PERC Senior Fellow, and co-authors Ryan Yonk and Diana Thomas have made a significant and useful contribution to the evolving Bootleggers & Baptists theory of government regulation and action.
According to Google Scholar, there have been more than 3,000 references to the theory since it saw the light of day in 1983. But Simmons, Yonk, and Thomas have done more than just refer to the theory or apply it; they have supplied a missing part to the evolving story—the political entrepreneur, the one who makes things happen. Their efforts help us to understand better how the world works and in this case, how difficult are the prospects for obtaining efficiency-enhancing actions through government regulation.