 A third ground on which the dichotomy between “the market” and “the state” has been criticized is that it obfuscates the influence of powerful economic agents, e.g., large-scale corporations, on political decision-making. As some authors have argued, some capitalist countries, notably the United States, are coming close to a situation in which it is not the state that regulates markets. Rather powerful agents among both the corporate and the political elites set the rules of the game to their own advantage, at the costs of society at large (e.g., Crouch 2011).