The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality. By Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles. Oxford University Press; 232 pages; $24.95. To be published in Britain in December; £16.99.

PITY the Washington wonk at this moment. America’s political dysfunction looks forbiddingly irreparable, its government implacably hostile to expertise. Amid the gloom, some scholars still look to chart a course towards a healthier politics. “The Captured Economy”, by Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles, sketches a plausible route out of the wilderness, albeit one that may struggle to find an audience in the corridors of power.

Their book is in part a blueprint for political realignment. For roughly a decade now Mr Lindsey, who is vice-president of the Niskanen Centre, a think-tank, and Mr Teles, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, have sought to nurture understanding between conservatives of a free-market orientation and progressives. Their book is a guide for members of this “liberaltarian” tribe. Cooperation between Republicans and Democrats is frustrated by their quite different views of the role of government. The left sees the state as a means to reduce market inequities, while the right sees government redistribution as a growth-sapping anchor. Yet America’s economy is now impaired by policies which both reduce growth and increase inequality. There is scope to satisfy left and right alike, if only politicians could see beyond the battle lines of partisan conflict.

The authors focus on policy failures created by rent-seeking. To an economist, a rent is excess, undeserved income resulting from barriers to competition. All too often rents are the result of successful attempts by firms to rig the rules of the marketplace in their favour. Rent-seeking seems to have grown worse in recent decades. America’s economy is not just weaker and less equal than it used to be; it is also less dynamic. Profits have grown and become more concentrated, indicating a lack of competitive vibrancy. Of the firms that enjoyed returns on invested capital of 25% or more in 2003, 85% were still earning returns that high a decade later.

The authors put forward four case studies to illustrate the choking spread of rent-seeking behaviour. Implicit and explicit government subsidies to the financial industry enrich bankers and sow the seeds of crisis, for example, but have done little to boost growth. Increasingly strong intellectual-property protections have not unleashed a torrent of new ideas, but have instead swelled the earnings of top firms, which wield their patents and copyrights menacingly at would-be innovators. The cost to negotiate reams of licence agreements, and the risk of lawsuits, can stymie the most determined of entrepreneurs. Analyses of occupational licensing and land-use rules turn up similarly skewed policies: they benefit those already on top at the expense of society as a whole.

To loosen the grip of the rent-seekers requires a more deliberative politics. Narrow interests triumph in part because the windfall they enjoy from their politicking gives them ever more incentive to organise and to press their case publicly. The costs of bad policy are, in contrast, spread across the public at large, making it harder for them to organise. As a result, leaders often hear only one side of the policy story.

Philanthropy could help fix this, Messrs Lindsey and Teles argue, as efforts to reform environmental and educational policy show: in these cases passionate campaigners made headway in the face of powerful political interests. But even better would be to “give government back its brain”. Since 1980, cost-cutting has shrunk congressional staffs and government information agencies like the Congressional Research Service. As a result, legislators have come to rely ever more heavily on research and analysis produced by interest groups. America’s government should invest in a well-paid, qualified civil-research bureaucracy, which could provide a neutral benchmark against which industry claims could be judged.

It is an attractive, pragmatic proposal. Sadly, America’s current leadership has little regard for government experts, and has indeed worked to undermine bastions of independent analysis. There is a risk that America’s institutional rot is too far advanced for mere deliberation to help.