Is "crony capitalism" caused by too much government intervention, or too little?

far too much. 'crony capitalism' is when the government issues permits and licenses mostly to its cronies -- to its supporters. meanwhile, the vast bulk of the people are shut out of profitable enterprises because they cannot get the required licenses and permits.

this causes increasing concentrations of wealth and power and usually becomes a revolving door from the elite to government and back again.

you might want to read Hernando de Soto and his description of how it used to work in Peru -- the permits and licenses to open a small store used to require 1.5 years' income for an ordinary working man AND he had to personally attend to his requests every day for many months [and thus earn no income] while doing so.

Crony capitalism could happen if a government was interventionist or not. Indeed, rather than a government which has too much power, it may be a hallmark of a nation where big business have too much power and effectively a government has to give them the contracts to keep a major player in their economy doing business in their country. For example an economy which heavily nationalised would not have to give out contracts to businesses to provide services, but where services were private and outsourced, the government would have to choose a business. This may be vulnerable to corruption as businesses could influence politicians unfairly and sometimes politicians may be encouraged to look at the businessmen who are funding their party. It is also conceivable that a nation with a high amount of government intervention can prevent corruption as there would a greater amount of regulation. The Nordic countries, who tend to favour more governmental responsibility are at the very top of Transparency International's list of transparent nations.

I am not saying that interventionist governments are, by definition, transparent. Most corruption occurs in totalitarian nations, the ugly side to government intervention, and the other answers here make good arguments to this effect. But I would like to stress that this sort of issue is not simply a matter of how much a government does or not.

We have to much gov. Intervention back in the great depression expensive regulations so passed onto businesses made the businesses fall faster and the passing of the tariff that made foreign goods more expensive caused even more damage because regulations made US goods more expensive and the citizensmade to little to pay and the people became worse off you would think that obama could at least read a history book and learn from those mistakes but then again you'd also hope that citizens knew enough about history to not make a mistake like this again and elect someone of obamas standards

Thats akin to asking "which came first, the chicken, or the egg?"

It was crony capitalism that paid for the revolutionary war, and it was the crony capitalists who occupied the first high positions in government.