Adaptation and opportunism in political and economic markets

Introduction According to a largely held view, in political markets, unlike economic markets, it is very easy to gain rents. This conclusion stems from the assumption that competition in political markets is actually quite weak and from the fact that perfect competition markets of the ideal type proposed by economists in which rents cannot be created are taken as a benchmark. In such markets, as Williamson (1991:17) so aptly put it: ‘individual buyers and sellers bear no dependency relation to each other. Instead, each party can go its own way at negligible cost to another.’