Randall G. Holcombe is DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University. Dr olcombe is also Senior Fellow at the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee-based think tank that specializes in issues facing state governments. He served on Florida Governor Jeb Bush's Council of Economic Advisors from 2000 to 2006, and is past president of the Public Choice Society and the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics.

The 'mixed economic systems' of the United States and Western Europe once combined market-based institutions operating, to greater or lesser extents, under public-sector control. Randall G. Holcombe's Political Capitalism documents the morphing of 'mixed' into 'crony'. Like Joseph Schumpeter before him, he warns that capitalism may not survive in a democracy after private business owners realize they can buy protection from pitiless competitive market forces from public officials, who, to advance their own political careers, are only too happy to exercise the state's coercive powers on behalf of the capitalists' interests. Robust free and open markets, the engines of prosperity, are transformed thereby into stagnant and corrupt national socialism. Political Capitalism is a bravura contribution to the political economy literature and a death knell for so-called democratic capitalism.' William F. Shughart II, J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice, Utah State University

• 1. The concept of political capitalism; 2. Political capitalism as an economic system; 3. The political and economic elite; 4. Interest groups and political exchange; 5. Political creation of economic rents; 6. Transitional gains and rent extraction; 7. The regulatory state; 8. Capitalism versus democracy; 9. The institutional evolution of political capitalism; 10. Public policy and political capitalism; 11. Is political capitalism inevitable?

Randall G. Holcombe is DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University. Dr olcombe is also Senior Fellow at the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee-based think tank that specializes in issues facing state governments. He served on Florida Governor Jeb Bush's Council of Economic Advisors from 2000 to 2006, and is past president of the Public Choice Society and the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics.

The 'mixed economic systems' of the United States and Western Europe once combined market-based institutions operating, to greater or lesser extents, under public-sector control. Randall G. Holcombe's Political Capitalism documents the morphing of 'mixed' into 'crony'. Like Joseph Schumpeter before him, he warns that capitalism may not survive in a democracy after private business owners realize they can buy protection from pitiless competitive market forces from public officials, who, to advance their own political careers, are only too happy to exercise the state's coercive powers on behalf of the capitalists' interests. Robust free and open markets, the engines of prosperity, are transformed thereby into stagnant and corrupt national socialism. Political Capitalism is a bravura contribution to the political economy literature and a death knell for so-called democratic capitalism.' William F. Shughart II, J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice, Utah State University

• 1. The concept of political capitalism; 2. Political capitalism as an economic system; 3. The political and economic elite; 4. Interest groups and political exchange; 5. Political creation of economic rents; 6. Transitional gains and rent extraction; 7. The regulatory state; 8. Capitalism versus democracy; 9. The institutional evolution of political capitalism; 10. Public policy and political capitalism; 11. Is political capitalism inevitable?

Randall G. Holcombe is DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University. Dr olcombe is also Senior Fellow at the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee-based think tank that specializes in issues facing state governments. He served on Florida Governor Jeb Bush's Council of Economic Advisors from 2000 to 2006, and is past president of the Public Choice Society and the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics.

The 'mixed economic systems' of the United States and Western Europe once combined market-based institutions operating, to greater or lesser extents, under public-sector control. Randall G. Holcombe's Political Capitalism documents the morphing of 'mixed' into 'crony'. Like Joseph Schumpeter before him, he warns that capitalism may not survive in a democracy after private business owners realize they can buy protection from pitiless competitive market forces from public officials, who, to advance their own political careers, are only too happy to exercise the state's coercive powers on behalf of the capitalists' interests. Robust free and open markets, the engines of prosperity, are transformed thereby into stagnant and corrupt national socialism. Political Capitalism is a bravura contribution to the political economy literature and a death knell for so-called democratic capitalism.' William F. Shughart II, J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice, Utah State University

• 1. The concept of political capitalism; 2. Political capitalism as an economic system; 3. The political and economic elite; 4. Interest groups and political exchange; 5. Political creation of economic rents; 6. Transitional gains and rent extraction; 7. The regulatory state; 8. Capitalism versus democracy; 9. The institutional evolution of political capitalism; 10. Public policy and political capitalism; 11. Is political capitalism inevitable?