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INTRODUCTION
People often see political and economic systems
as interrelated and complementary. In the midtwentieth
century, Friedrich Hayek and Milton
Friedman questioned whether political freedom could
survive without economic freedom. 1 Joseph Schumpeter
was pessimistic about the future of capitalism not because
of any weaknesses in the economic system, but because
he believed that the people who benefited from it the
most were unwilling to support it politically. 2 Decades
later, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the
breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 that ended the Cold
War, political scientist Francis Fukuyama called the triumph
of capitalism and democracy the end of history, 3
meaning that capitalism and democracy were the ultimate
evolution of economic and political systems.
Political and economic systems are designed to operate
within a structure of rules—rules that provide the appearance
that leaders make political and economic decisions
based on objective criteria rather than based on payoffs to
cronies who are close to those with political and economic
power. As political scientist Murray Edelman points out, 4
rules not only govern the operation of political and economic
systems, they also have symbolic value. The more
people believe that the system is based on objective and
INTRODUCTION 1