When regulations (or lack thereof) seem to detract from the common good, critics often point to regulatory capture as a culprit. In some academic and policy circles it seems to have assumed the status of an immutable law. Yet for all the ink spilled describing and decrying capture, the concept remains difficult to nail down in practice. Is capture truly as powerful and unpreventable as the informed consensus seems to suggest? This edited volume brings together seventeen scholars from across the social sciences to address this question. Their work shows that capture is often misdiagnosed and may in fact be preventable and manageable. Focusing on the goal of prevention, the volume advances a more rigorous and empirical standard for diagnosing and measuring capture, paving the way for new lines of academic inquiry and more precise and nuanced reform.

“This collection deftly sharpens our thinking about the nature of regulatory capture. It compiles the most multidimensional treatment we have of capture and the American regulatory state.”– John Braithwaite, Australian National University

“This is an enormously useful collection that goes beyond alleging and lamenting regulatory capture to provide diagnostic tools for evaluating purported instances of captured regulatory regimes and institutional techniques for avoiding their emergence and mitigating their effects.”– Jerry Mashaw, Yale University

“’Regulatory capture’ is an often used, little understood term. It is quoted frequently by those who would like to question a regulation for any of a number of agendas without an effort to understand the science or reason behind it. Daniel Carpenter, David Moss, and the co-authors have written a long overdue analysis of the issue and what, when proven true, can be done about it.– Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency