ABSTRACT
James Q. Wilson has commissioned nine essays on individual regulatory and enforcement programs, adding a magisterial essay of his own that attempts to integrate the major implications of the case studies into a broad theoretical perspective on regulatory politics and behavior. The agency, by building walls around the regulated sector, resembles a medieval lord who protects the economic interests of those sellers fortunate or prescient enough to have already gained shelter within the citadel. Markets have evolved in ways highly subversive of old-line "economic" regulation and highly conducive to social regulation. In the end, the politics of regulation turns less on the dynamics of coalition formation, the behavior of regulatory officials, or the rulings of courts, important as these are, than on the dominant vision of the larger society in which nationally organized interests, policy entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, and courts are merely highly specialized, and often unrepresentative, manifestations.
