Anatomy of agency capture: An organizational typology for diagnosing and remedying capture

Recent crises and disasters in regulated industries have renewed scholarly attention to regulatory capture. The present research incorporates and builds on these efforts by creating a typology to help researchers and practitioners organize the capture literature. The typology has two dimensions: the degree of coordination within the regulated industry, the agents of capture; and the scope of capture within the agency and elected officials, the targets of capture. I illustrate the utility of the typology by using a case study of banking regulation before the 2008 global financial crisis. The case study uses process‐tracing methodology to weigh evidence about the role and scope of capture in creating the crisis. The contributions of this research are twofold. First, for capture theory, the typology assists in organizing the disparate, multidisciplinary research on capture mechanisms and remedies. Second, for practice, this organization can lead to more accurate diagnoses about the scope of capture and suggest appropriately tailored remedies.