Much of the interesting development of these ideas was done by Mancur Olsen, in several good books, and was addressed again recently by Jonathan Rochkind entitled Demosclorosis. Both authors are worth checking out. Adam Perry wrote: | Actually, as public choice economic theory has shown, bad government | tends to be the inevitable result of the evolutionary pressures on | government and government officials. This is not to say that some | government programs are not occassionally well run or that some | government officials are not legitimately "trying their best", but | that the pressure on the whole system is to go towards maximum | corruption, just as the evolutionary pressure on organisms is to only | follow survival-prone strategies.