What impact does political entrepreneuriship have on freedom and flourishing? Further Reading

 Some suggestions for further reading have occurred to me since I published this series of essays on political entrepreneurship. I welcome suggestions for addition to this list.

To ensure that readers are familiar with the context, I will list the essays in the series before presenting suggestions for further reading.

What impact does political entrepreneurship have on freedom and flourishing?

 Preface to a Series of Essays

Part I: How is human flourishing linked to liberty?

Part II: Can cultural values explain freedom levels?

Part III: How is political entrepreneurship similar to economic entrepreneurship?

Part IV: What incentives are political entrepreneurs faced with?

Part V: What information constraints confront political entrepreneurs?

Part VI: What are the consequences of path dependence?

Part VII: What kind of political entrepreneurship is required?

Part VIII: Summary and Conclusions

Further Reading Recommendations

Do free markets and democratic institutions lead inevitably to crony capitalism?

For an interesting discussion of reasons why that might be so, see:

Munger, Michael C., and Mario Villarreal-Diaz. 2019. “The Road to Crony Capitalism.” The Independent Review 23 (3): 331–44.

Munger and Villarreal-Diaz argue that successful capitalism creates institutions and incentives that make collusion between political power and economic power more “profitable,” in the sense of rewarding those who control that power. They suggest that cronyism and the tendency to demand redistributive state interventions should both be viewed as features of free-market capitalism.

For a thoughtful response, see:

Quintas, André and Boettke, Peter J. and Boettke, Peter J., Crony Capitalism, Populism, and Democracy (November 02, 2025). GMU Working Paper in Economics Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5696202 .

Quintas and Boettke agree that current democratic institutions breed cronyism. They suggest that in the current institutional setting there is no endogenous path out of cronyism. However, they argue that does not mean that democracy is inherently incompatible with capitalism. The authors outline an alternative vision for democracy drawing on the works of James Buchanan, F.A. Hayek, Vincent Ostrom, and Don Lavoie.

In another paper, Quintas and Boettke discuss the competing visions of cronyism of Randall Holcombe and Richard Wagner, both of whom argue that our current system is more accurately described as cronyism rather than capitalism. Holcombe views cronyism as an unintended but inevitable byproduct of capitalism, while Wagner envisages it as an inherent feature of all economic systems - a fundamental reality of political-economic entanglement. Quintas and Boettke lean toward the latter view. Once we recognize that cronyism existed long before the modern state, the relevant question is not whether capitalism creates cronyism but whether capitalism can escape cronyism’s grip. See:

Quintas, André and Boettke, Peter J. and Boettke, Peter J., Competing Visions of Cronyism within the Virginia School of Political Economy (April 27, 2025). GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 25-16, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5280451 .

In Part VII: What kind of political entrepreneurship is required?, I referred to the chapter Vincent Geloso and Alex Tabarrok in the book, Can Democracy and Capitalism be Reconciled. Some other chapters in that book may also be relevant to consideration of political entrepreneurship e.g. William Galston’s chapter on the rise of the new right and Robert Lieberman’s chapter discussing the contemporary relevance of Polanyi’s views.

Issues relevant to political entrepreneurship are also discussed in several chapters of the recently published book, Liberal Emancipation, edited by Mikayla Novak. At this stage, I can only claim to have read the introductory chapter of that book.

What can we learn from the history of colonialism and development planning?

William Easterly has made important contributions. I have now read his latest book, Violent Saviours and have written about it in a post entitled: What was wrong with the Washington consensus?  The following passage quoted from the book lists some political entrepreneurs engaged in pro-market reforms:

 "In the end, many of the promarket reforms in the Rest were led or advocated by homegrown reformers, such as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Charles Soludo in Nigeria, Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais in Russia, Leszek Balcerowicz in Poland, Václav Klaus in Czechoslovakia, Simeon Djankov in Bulgaria, Hernando de Soto and Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru, a large number of Indian economists, and many other Latin American economists. Political leaders were often reformers themselves, like those in China and India, many other Asian countries, and many Latin American, Eastern European, and African countries."

What can we learn from Aristotle’s discussion of statecraft?

I have referred to Fred D. Miller’s book, Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics. Miller has recently published another book, Aristotelian Statecraft. I have now read some chapters in that book and have written an essay on the topic: "Does Aristotle's assertion that a viable political system requires a supportive culture still have relevance today?" 

John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies

Gus diZerega - a retired political scientist whose own work emphasizes the importance of liberal democracy as a social system - recommends John Kingdon’s book as “the most careful systematic study of political entrepreneurship”. An abstract of the book suggests that it attempts to answer the questions: How do subjects come to officials’ attention? How are the alternatives from which they choose generated? How is the governmental agenda set? Why does an idea’s time come when it does?

 Does tribalism corrupt politics even when one side is worse?

Dan Williams argues that it does in an excellent Substack article: "Tribalism Corrupts Politics (Even When One Side is Worse", Conspicuous Cognition (Dec 30, 2025). A link is here.

Is populism just as bad as the rule of experts? 

That is one of the issues discussed by Roger Koppl n his book, Expert Failure, published in 2018.  Koppl brings an economic perspective to “the problem of experts”.

I have drawn upon Koppl's views in my essay: Can the rise of populism be explained as a reaction to the rule of experts?

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As noted above, this post will be revised from time to time to add as further recommendations.

Part VIII: Summary and Conclusions

This is the final essay of a series exploring the topic: What impact does political entrepreneurship have on freedom and flourishing? The series commenced with a Preface which provides a synopsis and explains why I think it is important to obtain a better understanding of political entrepreneurship.

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The purpose of this series of essays has been to explore the contribution that political entrepreneurship makes to human flourishing. A central issue is whether political entrepreneurship has a role to play in promoting a political and legal order more conducive to human flourishing.  

Each essay in this series has sought to address a question relevant to assessing the impact of political entrepreneurship on freedom and flourishing. The main points that emerge from each essay are as follows:

1. This series of essays has focused on institutions related to liberty because those institutions are strongly linked to human flourishing. The links between freedom and flourishing are conceptual as well as empirical. Human flourishing is inherently individualized and self-directed. Liberty is necessary to enable individuals to flourish in different ways without the flourishing of some individuals or groups being given structural preference over that of others.
2. At a national level, prevailing culture offers only a partial explanation of differences in economic and personal freedom levels. In several countries, political entrepreneurs and their ideologies have played an obvious historical role in bringing about economic and personal freedom levels that are substantially lower than predicted by underlying cultural values.
3. Political entrepreneurship is similar in some ways to other forms of entrepreneurship. Don Lavoie’s suggestion that entrepreneurs play an interpretive role in complex systems is applicable to all kinds of entrepreneurship. Political entrepreneurs respond to public discourse by using it as a basis for policy innovation.
4. Political entrepreneurship is largely about obtaining and using political power. Political entrepreneurs face incentives to exploit the misconceptions and irrational preferences of voters by making deals with narrow interest groups at the expense of consumers and taxpayers. Innovators among them have incentives to focus on niches in the marketplace of ideas that established parties don’t satisfy. However, political entrepreneurs who engage overtly in interest group politics are not always able to overcome opposition from other politicians who see benefits in seeking to serve broader community interests.
5. Many political entrepreneurs are motivated by a desire to pursue economic, environmental and social objectives that are widely supported in the broader community. However, even modest attempts to steer the market system toward desired economic objectives often obstruct the price signals that convey information from consumers to producers about the most advantageous use of resources. Pursuit of social and environmental objectives is usually a matter of “muddling through” in the face of unintended consequences.
6. Historically, the path-dependence of social norms has played an important role in slowing the emergence of interest group politics in the long-standing democracies. People were once more reluctant to become dependent upon government or to use the political system to obtain benefits at the expense of others than they are today. The erosion of those norms has led to increasing constraints on economic freedom, a decline in dynamism, and rapid growth in public debt. Path-dependence of social norms now poses a difficult challenge for political entrepreneurs seeking to promote policies that are more conducive to freedom and flourishing.
7. The idea that autocrats have sometimes helped to promote greater economic freedom may not be entirely fanciful but empirical evidence certainly doesn’t support the idea that democracy, and the personal freedom associated with it, is incompatible with high levels of economic freedom. It is clear, nevertheless, that the long-standing democracies are experiencing difficulties in maintaining economic freedom in the face of interest group politics. Reform-minded political entrepreneurs in those countries have a great deal to learn from previous reform experiences. The problem of ensuring adoption of government policies that more consistently advance economic and personal freedom cannot be reduced to the question of how to elect better political entrepreneurs to national leadership positions. Institutional change is a complex process involving social movements, media organizations, and interactions between individual citizens, as well as local and national politics.

 In the preface I suggested that it is important to obtain a better understanding of political entrepreneurship at this time because there seems to be increasing support in liberal democracies for leaders who propose rule changes which are likely to have detrimental impacts on prospects for freedom and flourishing. In this series of essays, I have attempted to shed some light on the ways authoritarian leaders seek to appeal to the public but have not attempted to assess the gravity of current threats to liberty.

My concluding message for those who perceive that liberty is under threat is that they should emphasize the potential for positive relationships between democracy and human flourishing. Perhaps the most important thing I have learned in writing these essays is that my previous tendency toward cynicism about democracy was not entirely appropriate. If we want institutions that are more supportive of freedom and flourishing to become entrenched, we will need more supportive citizens engaged in discursive processes at all levels of society – that means more democracy, not less. 

Further Reading

Please see the following post which offers suggestions for further reading.