Antitrust Policy and Interest-Group Politics

Chapter 9 stresses that, like the enforcement process itself, antitrust reform does not take place in a political vacuum. The interest-group theory nonetheless has two important implications for the debate about reform. First, it must be recognized that the same incentives and constraints that operate in the enforcement of existing policy will influence decision making about the design of new policies. Second, as long as government holds a monopoly of antitrust policy, there will be strategic use of that policy by private interest groups having a stake in its exercise. Thus, while the "unintended" consequences of antitrust might in principle be mitigated through efforts to change existing incentives by, for example, carefully considering efficient assignments of the right to sue, the optimal payoffs from antitrust suits, and so on, such consequences cannot be wholly eliminated even by the best-intentioned of reformers.

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