Policies with narrow gains and widely spread costs pass easily, because only the beneficiaries find it worth organising.
Olson's mechanism, and the reason sugar tariffs survive: the benefit is concentrated on a few producers who will organise, the cost is spread across consumers at a few dollars a year each.
In practice
- A tariff worth £30m to four producers and 40p a year to each consumer survives every review.
- A car park levy that costs 200 staff £400 a year each is fought harder than a procurement decision worth twenty times more.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works