Supongamos que la administración municipal de una determinada ciudad se caracteriza por su alto nivel de corrupción y que deseamos investigar este fenómeno. Tenemos a nuestra disposición diversas alternativas, una opción naive consiste en postular la hipótesis que la corrupción existe porque funcionarios corruptos ocupan cargos públicos; designemos en dichos cargos a hombres y mujeres honestos y la corrupción habrá de desaparecer.

Since the pioneering works of Anthony Downs (1957), James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock (1962), and William Riker (1962) most of the public choice literature have been developed under a democratic framework. These works, which are based upon the assumptions of utility maximization and rationality of the individual voters, present testable theories of political behavior.

In 1908 Arthur Bentley proposed an economic approach to political behavior that focused on political pressure groups instead of voters, politicians and political parties; under this framework the economic policies have to be interpreted as equilibriums, given that they are the end product of a redistributive game; game which is highly influenced by the rules under which it is played.

La presente investigación se encuentra dedicada a estudiar la relevancia de la Ley Saenz Peña, la cual instauró el sufragio universal, secreto y obligatorio en la Argentina, a la hora de interpretar las diversas políticas económicas llevadas a cabo en el país.

This paper analyzes the effects upon resource allocation, welfare and the public sector deficit of two lobbies, the public sector contractor's lobby (the PSC lobby), and the labor union's lobby (the LU lobby).