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The Agenda

NRO’s domestic-policy blog, by Reihan Salam.


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Mark Pennington on the Implications of Public Choice Theory

Mark Pennington argues (a) that public choice theory offers a more compelling take regarding how interest groups coalesce and exercise power than models rooted in class antagonism, yet (b) the most compelling rejoinder to public choice theory — that it is reductive, and that it underestimates the importance of values and and ideas in motivating collective action — also suggests that class antagonism is not the most useful lens through which to view political struggles. So (a) suggests that the top 1% is politically divided and that its clashing members are part of clashing alliances for securing rents and (b) suggests that members of the top 1% and the 99% respectively are motivated by a mix of factors that include religious convictions, civic idealism, and much else, not primarily by a desire to entrench their class position or to accumulate more power and wealth. 

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