The chapters in this opening section offer new perspectives on the existing understanding of regulatory capture. Approaching the subject from three distinct disciplines (history, law, and political science), they illuminate how scholarship has yet to provide an explanation of capture that can adequately inform efforts to prevent it. Together, they provide a foundation for this volume's core inquiry into how capture manifests in practice and how it might best be mitigated going forward.

In an analysis of special interest influence over the course of U.S. history, William Novak uncovers the long history of American democracy’s struggles with capture. Challenging the received wisdom – that capture emerged as a problem only with the rise of the administrative state beginning in the late nineteenth century – Novak argues that capture theory gave a new name to the longstanding (and long-recognized) problem of special interest influence in democratic decision making, going back to the dawn of the republic. He notes that the creation of the administrative state was to a large extent itself an attempt to prevent – or at least circumvent – undue influence within legislatures. With this longer history in view, Novak undercuts the belief that modern regulatory agencies are inherently the source of the problem. Noting that regulation has always been an important part of governance in America, he suggests that undue influence and its prevention are properly seen as a cat-and-mouse game, which has evolved over time, requiring persistent innovation to protect the common good.