nucleation

LIT-1327: What Is Ideological Capture and How Do We Measure It? Using Antitrust Reform to Understand Expert–Public Cleavages

1 min read

Properties5
StatusActive — read 2026-10-21 (NOTE-1051) in full, from the open-access (CC BY 4.0) published version on Cambridge Core, without its online appendix; worth reading for its definition of ideological capture, capture through the criteria a regulator adopts with no lobbying needed (THEORY-859), and for a pre-registered survey showing that the public weighs layoffs, quality and lobbying well above price cuts in merger review while antitrust lawyers support replacing the consumer welfare standard 42.6 points less than the public (THEORY-833). Read it knowing that the lawyer sample is a convenience sample of 103, that the verdict of capture also rests on a history drawn from secondary sources, and that the introduction's "four times larger" and the analysis's "seven times larger" describe the same gap.
Version2
Tagssociety-and-governance
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1051 — Short, Hill and Brown — What is ideological capture and how do we measure it
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-833 — In a 2024 survey of a quota-matched online sample of 2,092 US adults and a convenience sample of 103 antitrust lawyers, the public weighed layoffs, worse product quality and more lobbying well above price reductions in judging whether a merger should be challenged, the consumer welfare standard's own objective, while support for replacing that standard was 42.6 points lower among the lawyers than among the public, against a partisan gap of 5.9 points, THEORY-859 — Regulatory capture can operate through the evaluative framework a regulator adopts rather than through its decisions: when experts design a standard from an ideologically motivated view of the public interest that consistently marginalizes important public values, outcomes can favour an interest with no lobbying or improper exchange; US antitrust's consumer welfare standard is offered as a strong case

Graph View

Short, N., Hill, S. & Brown, J. (2026). What Is Ideological Capture and How Do We Measure It? Using Antitrust Reform to Understand Expert–Public Cleavages. Perspectives on Politics 24(2): 680–700. doi:10.1017/S153759272510323X. First published online 17 November 2025.

Read in NOTE-1051, without the online appendix.

Why this is here

A25 called it “arguably the most directly relevant new reference”: capture through the categories of regulatory reasoning, “without any lobbying or improper exchange being necessary.” A25: “We should not introduce the claim that capture can operate through the categories of regulatory reasoning as though that were new.” A26 §4 put it at the level of control over the evaluative objective. Prior art for TERM-066 and CLAIM-404.

Backlinks