Public Choice

According to Public Choice theory:

• Interest groups--with high value, concentrated interests--will use the political process to receive benefits at the expense of the greater public with more diffuse interests.
• Politicians are not working to serve the general public, except insofar as doing so maximizes the politicians' personal utility. Often, this is modeled as maximizing their chance of reelection.
• Likewise with bureaucrats. They are often modeled as maximizing personal (or organizational) power, through larger staffs and budgets. This sometimes leads to regulatory capture.
• Businesses will use the political process to engage in rent seeking, receiving government-granted monopoly power.

Public Choice should not be confused with Social Choice, a completely different cross-discipline of economics and political science.