Bootleggers, Baptists, and political entrepreneurs: key players in the rational game and morality play of regulatory politics.

• Author: Simmons, Randy T.

Much of the academic discussion about rent seeking and interest-group politics focuses on available rents and the groups seeking them. We can enrich those discussions by attending to the political entrepreneurs who assist in identifying, seeking, and allocating the rents. In this article, therefore, we focus on political entrepreneurship in the rent-seeking society. One of the best models of the rent-seeking society pertains to "bootleggers and Baptists," whose story provides a framework for considering how political entrepreneurs operate in the rent-seeking society. Political entrepreneurship as a class of action obviously plays a role in all political contexts, not only in the bootlegger-and-Baptist framework. To limit the scope of the present inquiry, however, we focus on this framework only.

Bruce Yandle (1983) developed the bootlegger-and-Baptist model out of his experience as a U.S. regulatory economist. Bootlegger and Baptist are terms he uses to identify a coalition of seemingly opposed groups who need each other in order to gain the acceptance of a policy proposal. The model is taken from the observation that groups may work toward the same end even though their interests in that end may diverge wildly. Bootleggers benefit from bans on Sunday liquor sales or from designation of an entire county as "dry." The Baptists provide the moral cover for the bootleggers' interests. Baptists are opposed to bootlegging, but they are more opposed to legal sales. They provide, in Yandle's words, "vital and vocal endorsement" for banning alcohol sales (Yandle 1999c, 3). The bootleggers work in less obvious ways to lubricate the political machinery.

The bootlegger-and-Baptist model has been applied profitably to a broad range of issues, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (Reynolds 1993), the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Yandle 1999a, 1999b), tobacco regulation (Yandle et al. 2007), genetically modified food policy (Meins 2003), state liquor monopolies (Benson, Rasmussen, and Zimmerman 2003), and interstate wine shipping (Wiseman and Ellig 2007). The model's virtue lies in its power to explain the odd alliances that propel regulations. In fact, Yandle suggests that most regulations can be understood as bootlegger-and-Baptist activity, even if those who benefit monetarily operate fully within the law. Bootlegger, then, is a term for those who benefit economically, and Baptist for those who provide moral cover for the regulations.

In the bootlegger-and-Baptist story, the two groups come together to achieve a common policy goal. The effects of their collective action are well understood and described in what is becoming a large literature. But part of the story is not clear: Just how do these "natural enemies" come together in the first place? It seems unlikely that the local Baptist preacher and the moonshiners meet in someone's parlor to discuss banning Sunday sales. It is more likely that these parties meet separately with a political entrepreneur who represents them individually or jointly in the political process. As bootlegger-and-Baptist types of political activities move beyond small southern counties, we should expect the arena for political entrepreneurship to expand.

Characteristics of Bootlegger and Baptist

In a 1999 retrospective on his original bootlegger-and-Baptist article, Yandle identifies several features that form the "essence of the theory." The first is that "durable social regulation evolves when it is demanded by each of two distinctly different groups. Baptists point to the moral high ground and give vital and vocal endorsement of laudable public benefits promised by a desired regulation." The Baptists' critical role in the model is to provide a moral foundation for the desired political action. Bootleggers, according to Yandle, are not as visible in the process as Baptists, but they are "no less vital." They "grease the political machinery with some of their expected proceeds. They are simply in it for the money" (1999c, 3).

A second feature is that "bootleggers can rely on Baptists to monitor and enforce the restrictions that benefit bootleggers" (Yandle 1999c, 3). Thus, the moralizing continues, as does the monitoring of legal outlets, possibly with the sponsorship of various churches, while bootleggers continue to enjoy their legally enforced monopoly. Of course, as the bootleggers continue to sell their liquor, the Baptists constantly urge law enforcement to prosecute the lawbreakers. (1)

A third feature of the framework is that although rhetoric is necessary to move a political agenda forward, "neither well-varnished moral promptings nor unvarnished campaign contributions can do the job alone. It takes both" (Yandle 1999c, 7). Because, as Yandle points out, all political action by definition always serves some interest groups, wrapping self-interest in a moral flag is a necessary part of politics. The other necessary parts are the funds and other forms of electoral support required to keep incumbents in office.

The fourth and final feature of the bootlegger-and-Baptist model is that politicians can satisfy everyone in this situation. They make Baptists happy by publicly endorsing Baptist values, all the while receiving necessary campaign contributions from bootleggers. Yandle makes his strongest statement about the bootlegger-and-Baptist model in regard to politicians' having it both ways: "bootlegger and Baptists," he writes, "are part of the glue that binds the body politic" (1999, 7)--that is, without cooperation from seemingly incompatible groups, politics would operate in a smaller sphere.

The existence of bootleggers and Baptists across the political spectrum produces opportunities for creative political entrepreneurship. Forming coalitions, exploiting the efforts of naive Baptists or bootleggers, setting agendas, and other activities constitute opportunities for the entrepreneurs, whether they are politicians, wannabe politicians, bureaucrats, or private public-sector entrepreneurs. Yandle and his colleagues (2007) suggest one example of such political entrepreneurship when they propose that "televangelists" might become partners with the bootleggers to transfer even more rents to the bootleggers than can be accomplished in a simple bootlegger-Baptist coalition. Such a televangelist acts for the bootleggers' specific benefit by providing more bang for their coordinated buck. If the televangelist metaphor is expanded, the Baptists are likely to have their own political entrepreneurs who work actively to improve the outcomes for their groups. Televangelists, however, arc only one possible manifestation of political entrepreneurship.

Characteristics of Political Entrepreneurs

Political entrepreneurship is generally ignored in interest-group and rent-seeking theory. (2) Dennis Mueller's Public Choice III (2003), the definitive summary of the public-choice literature, contains no reference to what might be construed as political entreprencurship. Political Science: State of the Discipline (Katznelson and Milner 2002), the American Political Science Association's decennial review of the previous decade's scholarship in political science, does not discuss political entrepreneurship. Public-choice theory and political science assume that all players in the political arena act strategically, yet neither discipline considers political actors through the lens of entrepreneurship. Politicians, for example, tend to be viewed as mere brokers between competing groups, which ignores the fact that politicians, like private entrepreneurs, have property rights to sell and are alert to discover political profit opportunities. (3)

We use the term entrepreneur broadly to mean homo agens (the human actor) of Austrian economics, who "possesses the propensity to pursue goals effectively, once ends and means are clearly identified, but also possesses the alertness to identify which ends are to be sought and what means are available" (Boettke 1993, 880). Israel Kirzner, whose work in Austrian economics focuses on entrepreneurship, defines entrepreneurial behavior as "alertness to hitherto unnoticed opportunities" to achieve private outcomes (1973, 39). Randall Holcombe suggests that "political entrepreneurship occurs when an individual acts on a political profit opportunity" (2002, 143). Daniel Sutter argues that entrepreneurs not only discover profit opportunities in the market, but also "discover innovative ways to coordinate individual action for successful collective action" (2002, 202). In line with these descriptions of private and public entrepreneurship, we suggest that political entrepreneurship is alertness to unnoticed opportunities to achieve desired political outcomes. In the rent-seeking society, therefore, political entrepreneurship is alertness to previously unnoticed rent-seeking opportunities.

The reward for successful entrepreneurship in the private market is profit. In the political market, the rewards (that is, rents) vary. For the elected politician, rewards are outcome related and may include campaign contributions, credit claims, praise, avoidance of criticism, and vote maximization. Appointed officials claim credit or avoid criticism, increase their status, and gain support from politicians and interest groups. Private actors such as lobbyists, consultants, and interest-group staffs gain many...