Bootleggers and Baptists

Economic theory

The mainstream economic theory of regulation treats politicians and administrators as brokers among interest groups. Bootleggers and Baptists is a specific idea in the subfield of regulatory economics that attempts to predict which interest groups will succeed in obtaining rules they favor. It holds that coalitions of opposing interests that can agree on a common rule will be more successful than one-sided groups.

Baptists do not merely agitate for legislation, they help monitor and enforce it (a law against Sunday alcohol sales without significant public support would likely be ignored, or be evaded through bribery of enforcement officers). Thus bootleggers and Baptists is not just an academic restatement of the common political accusation that shadowy for-profit interests are hiding behind public-interest groups to fund deceptive legislation. It is a rational theory to explain relative success among types of coalitions.

Another part of the theory is that bootleggers and Baptists produce suboptimal legislation. Although both groups are satisfied with the outcome, broader society would be better off either with no legislation or different legislation. For example, a surtax on Sunday alcohol sales could reduce Sunday alcohol consumption as much as making it illegal. Instead of enriching bootleggers and imposing policing costs, the surtax could raise money to be spent on, say, property tax exemptions for churches and alcoholism treatment programs. Moreover, such a program could be balanced to reflect the religious beliefs and drinking habits of everyone, not just certain groups. From the religious point of the view, the bootleggers have not been cut out of the deal, the government has become the bootlegger.

Although the bootleggers and Baptists story has become a standard idea in regulatory economics, it has not been systematically validated as an empirical proposition. It is a catch-phrase useful in analyzing regulatory coalitions rather than an accepted principle of economics.

Global warming

Legislation and treaties to reduce global warming often command support of both polluters and environmentalists. While there are several possible interpretations of that (for example, polluters could be trying to forestall stronger legislation, or to involve themselves in the process to insert specific protections; environmentalists could be unaware of industry support or fooled by it) it has been held up as an example of bootleggers and Baptists. In this version of the story, the polluters are looking for taxes and regulations to reduce competition, hoping to gain more from ability to charge higher prices than it costs them to pay taxes and comply with regulations. Environmentalists don’t care that some users of carbon are paying more money to some carbon emitters, as long as total carbon emissions go down and society takes a public stance in favor of the environment.

Literal example

"Arkansas liquor stores have allied with religious leaders to fight statewide legalization of alcohol sales. The stores in wet counties don’t want to lose customers. The churches don’t want to lose souls. Larry Page, a Southern Baptist pastor and director of the Arkansas Faith and Ethics Council, which traces its roots to the Anti-Saloon League of Arkansas in 1899, [also recalled]...when his group joined with feminists to oppose pornography and cooperated with Mississippi casinos to fight gambling in Arkansas."

Other applications

Bootleggers and Baptists has been invoked to explain nearly every political alliance for regulation in the United States in the last 30 years including the Clean Air Act, interstate trucking, state liquor stores, the Pure Food and Drug Act, environmental policy, regulation of genetically modified organisms, the North American Free Trade Agreement, environmental politics, gambling legislation, blood donation, wine regulation, and the tobacco settlement.

There are economists who regard bootleggers and Baptists as a libertarian catch phrase against all regulation rather than a serious piece of regulatory economics theory. Not all of these examples are rigorous rational explanations. For example, many do not consider why the bootleggers form genuine alliances with real Baptists rather than fooling or funding a front group. Other analyses merely describe the successful coalition without considering why it formed instead of possible alternative coalitions.