ABSTRACT
A central tenet of economic analysis is that people making market decisions pursue their own self-interest. Public choice scholars have attempted to extend this reasoning beyond the domain of individual market decisions to collective choices in political and organizational settings. While economic analysis from outside the Bureau of Reclamation has indicated that the Central Arizona Project (CAP) would yield fewer benefits and larger costs to farmers than continued pumping of groundwater, Arizona agriculturalists have consistently believed it to be in their interest to take a position strongly favoring the project. The federal government conceives of the CAP as a means to promote water conservation and to reduce groundwater overdraft. These objectives are to be accomplished by regulations and restrictions that would be imposed in the implementation of the project.
