Our review has been brief and highly selective, motivated by a focus on a
narrow topic (interest groups) and a specific methodology (the maximizing models
of economics). The major topics we have addressed are (1) the model of
Olson and his theory of interest groups as an engine for strangling growth in
democracies; (2) the Chicago School of Stigler, Posner, Barro, and Pelman,
oriented toward regulation and its benefits to the regulated; (3) the Virginian
model of rent seeking; (4) the newer Chicago model of Becker, with its elegant
equilibrium model and its harking back to pluralist theory and the Coase theorem;
and (5) more general models of group influence embedded in formal models,
including the institutional approach of Denzau and Munger and the equilibrium
model of Austen-Smith.