rent - seeking behavior

The expenditure of resources in order to bring about an uncompensated transfer of goods or services from another person or persons to one's self as the result of a "favorable" decision on some public policy. The term seems to have been coined (or at least popularized in contemporary political economy) by the economist Gordon Tullock. Examples of rent-seeking behavior would include all of the various ways by which individuals or groups lobby government for taxing, spending and regulatory policies that confer financial benefits or other special advantages upon them at the expense of the taxpayers or of consumers or of other groups or individuals with which the beneficiaries may be in economic competition.

[See also: rent (meaning 2), captured agency, subsidy, protectionism, pork-barrel legislation, bureaucratic politics, oligarchy]