One chapter I would like to highlight is “Electoral Pressures and the Legal System: Friends or Foes?” by Russell Sobel, Joshua C. Hall and Matt E. Ryan. In particular they note that electoral incentives for district attorneys influence prosecution decisions. They write:
Politics plays a role in influencing legal outcomes at other points in the legal process as well. District attorneys (DAs) are elected officials with considerable influence over case outcomes. Not only do DAs decide when there exists enough evidence to charge a defendant, they also decide the level of resources to devote to prosecuting the case. The legal system gives considerable leeway to district attorney’s to exercise personal judgment, from the decision to prosecute to the decision to offer a plea bargain. Simon (1991) details how pressure from district attorneys increases the man-hours devoted to finding a suspect in high-profile homicide cases. Despite the clear pressure that elections place on DAs, little empirical work has been done on this issue, with the exception of Dyke (forthcoming), who finds the probability that a defendant will be prosecuted increases in an election year. His work suggests that DAs are more likely to prosecute cases in election years that they otherwise might dismiss in non-election years.
Public choice theory provides a unique perspective on issues that many do not even initially consider economics, but looking through this lens allows us to discover economic relationships that may otherwise go unnoticed. It can as economists like to do provide a rational explanation to what otherwise looks irrational.
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