The values and hence the actions of the individuals in the highest positions of power will tend to reflect the conditions that enable them to acquire such power in the first place. Consider, for example, the value scale of a successful powerful elected politician in a democracy. In order to obtain and maintain such power, the politician's values and actions must be compatible with the political climate. Perhaps he sincerely identifies with the causes that are popular with voters, or perhaps he cynically embraces them as a means to power. In either case, a certain hierarchy of values is implicit in his actions, and that value hierarchy must be constrained by the requirements of the political environment if he is to remain in power. If his values conflict with those requirements, leading him openly to oppose the wishes of most voters, then he will be very likely to lose his position to another.

But this example is just a special case of a wider principle, which we may call the law of political selection, viz., that the highest positions in any government tend in the long run to be held by those persons who are most skillful at obtaining and maintaining political authority in that environment. Although this principle may seem a truism, it nevertheless yields important information, as we shall see later, about the likely character and values of the people who hold positions of authority in particular kinds of political systems—and, consequently, on the kinds of policies that they tend to implement. This type of analysis, particularly as it applies to a mixed economy like our own, is characteristic of the recent Public Choice school of economics, including scholars such as Gordon Tullock and Nobel prize-winner James Buchanan.