Protection provided to declining industries is generally explained as founded in the judgement that specific factors, which do not have the opportunities for adjustment available to mobile factors,1 ought be cushioned against income losses due to falls in the world price of their industry's output. The argument is that moral hazard causes private insurance markets for income maintenance to fail, so obligating governments to provide social insurance against income losses; or, alternatively, some form of altruistic notion of fairness is viewed as underlying protection of individuals' incomes in face of exogenous change. Whether the social insurance or altruism view is taken, the authorities are seen as responding to social justice considerations in providing industries adversely affected by changes in world prices with compensating protection, at least temporarily to ease difficulties in adjustment-although the industry itself may influence the level and timing of protection by lobbying to make its plight known.2 This paper presents an alternative to social justice perspectives on declining industry protection. Protective responses for declining industries are considered when the authorities, rather than seeking social welfare objectives, pursue their own self-interest motives to maximize political support.? An adaptation of the Stigler-Peltzman regulatory model is used herein to describe a political support equilibrium for a protected industry. Section I reviews their model for background purposes, and reinterprets the gainers and losers from government intervention in a Ricardo-Viner setting. Section II introduces a distinction in the evocation of political-support response between changes in the gainers' and losers' welfare that derive from administrative decisions and changes that are the consequence of exogenous market forces. The authorities' self-interest response to declines in the world price of an industry's output is then established. Section III presents a brief concluding summary and contrasts social justice perspectives on declining industry protection with the outcome when political self-interest motives underly intervention.
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