The Supply of Majority Leadership

Abstract

Political competition is normally analyzed in both the popular and scholarly presses in terms of the competition of individual candidates for seats in electoral districts and in terms of the competition of parties for majority control of the legislature. An equally interesting manifestation of political competition takes place within political parties when politicians of the same stripe compete with one another for positions of power and authority in the party. In some respects the latter type of competition is not well understood, or perhaps we should say that it has not been taken on as an independent problem for analysis in the economic approach to politics; for example, it was recently observed that

an all power legislator would have no checks from competition, so his actions are limited not only by reelection—which cannot be better than a periodic event —but also by the division of powers among groups with different terms, different constituencies, and different incentives.¹

While there is nothing wrong with this statement taken in the general context of Stigler’s remarks, we feel that this view of legislative power tends to mask the nature of the constraints that competition within parties for positions of legislative authority tends to place on legislators such as majority leaders.

This chapter has been reprinted from Robert E. McCormick and Robert D. Tollison “Rent-Seeking Competition in Political Parties,” Public Choice 34 (1979):5–14, by permission of Public Choice.