The chapters in this section examine actual cases of regulation and, in so doing, illuminate capture in ways that may foster its prevention. The cases, ranging in time from the 1920s to the present, cover a spectrum of domains regulated by government, from the airwaves and highways to deep-water drilling and public health. Although consistent with our hypothesis that weak capture may be widespread, these chapters consider a range of cases in which regulators succeeded, despite entrenched interests, and in which regulation failed for reasons only partly related to capture. These cases make clear that capture is neither a constant barrier to regulatory success, nor the sole cause of regulatory failure. They suggest that, in addition to model building, in-depth investigation of real-world regulation is necessary to better understand both the ways capture manifests in practice and how (and under what conditions) the public interest can be advanced through contemporary regulation.

David Moss and Jonathan B.L. Decker’s historical analysis in Chapter 8 demonstrates the folly of inferring capture from the mere fact that a regulatory decision seems to benefit a particular interest group. The Federal Radio Commission’s 1927 decision against expanding the broadcast spectrum has long been viewed as a classic case of capture, in which incumbent broadcasters benefited at the expense of the broader public. However,Moss and Decker find that the FRC’s decision was supported by all of the relevant interest groups at the time, from radio manufacturers to radio listeners, and that the incumbent broadcasters alleged to have captured the decision were in fact among the least unified on the issue. The authors find no basis for the consensus judgment that the decision was captured, and they encourage more rigorous historical inquiry to avoid such misdiagnoses in the future.