state capture

state capture, the domination of policy making by private, often corporate, power.

In the second half of the 20th century, the concept of state capture was used in the early critique of the pluralist theoretical framework in political science. According to pluralism, a multiplicity of interest groups prevents any particular group from being dominant. However, the counterargument was that interest groups are not equally endowed with resources. Many commentators argued that business represents a very strong power system—far stronger than any other social group or institution—that challenges and threatens to dominate public power. The term capture describes how public bureaucracies had become dominated by strong and powerful interest groups. In a context characterized by a complex multitude of interest groups, the bureaucrats tend to deal with the best-organized groups as a way of reducing complexity.

State capture has been used in the critique of corporatism as well. Corporatism refers to the permanent representation of well-organized hierarchical interest groups in the state apparatus, a phenomenon that may be seen as a way of the state giving in to specific interests. Both the critics of pluralism and the critics of corporatism argue that private corporate power must be controlled by democratic institutions.

In the literature on postcolonial societies, the concept of state capture refers to rulers favouring their own ethnic or regional groups rather than the nation as such; the state is thereby captured by a specific group. A weak state may be the most prone to be captured by interest groups or even by strong individuals. A relatively strong, institutionalized state may therefore be necessary in order to avoid state capture. An institutionalized party system also may be important, for where parties are weak, traditional forms of elite interaction tend to prevail, enabling elites to capture the state apparatus.

State capture has also been related to the postcommunist region where it described a policy process dominated by powerful oligarchs that belonged to the old nomenklatura elite. Experts studying this phenomenon have defined state capture as a situation in which decisions are made to appease specific interests, maybe even through illicit and nontransparent private payments to public officials, rather than to suit the national interest aggregated and mediated through a democratic process. State capture takes place when the basic rules of the game are shaped by particularistic interests rather than by the aggregated national interest.