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CHAPTER FIVE PUBLIC INTEREST THEORY AND ITS PROBLEMS Living adults share, we must believe, the same public interest. For them, however, the public interest is mixed with, and is often put at odds with, their private and special interests. Put this way, we can say that the public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently. —WALTER LIPPMANN, The Public Philosophy One commonly held distinction between government and market organizations is that government should work in the “public interest” (Appleby 1952; Flathman 1966). It is not only citizens who expect public interested government (Goodsell 2003), so do public managers (Perry 1996; Crewson 1997; Wittmer 1991). Yet, despite the convergence of citizens’ and public managers’ views about the importance of the public interest in government service, there is little agreement about the meaning of the public interest, either in general or as applied to particular issues and controversies. Essayist and journalist Walter Lippman’s definition of the public interest, perhaps the best known, gives some insight into the problems of using the concept, but, as do so many other definitions of the public interest, provides little practical guidance. Were one to take Lippman’s definition as a starting point for public policy, one would be stymied. This chapter has two major objectives. First, to examine some of the dominant ideas of public interest theory and to consider how they relate to one another , and second, to examine the recent intellectual history of public interest theory, paying particular attention to two questions: “Why did public interest theory begin to buckle under its critics’ assaults?” and, perhaps even more interesting , “Why does public interest theory, despite the ebb and flow of intellectual fashions and despite powerful criticisms against it, nevertheless have continuing appeal?” As noted in chapter 1, nearly fifty years have passed since the relentless criticisms of behaviorally oriented political scientists derailed the formal study of the 83 public interest. Schubert’s (1961, 348) scathing dismissal of the public interest as “childish myth” and Sorauf’s (1957, 638) comparison of the public interest to “fables” were not the worst of it. In addition to over-the-top rhetoric, these two critics, and others (e.g., Downs 1962), provided sound, convincing criticisms of concepts of the public interest. Among the various criticisms advanced, several seem incontestable: (a) the term is vague and ambiguous, (b) individual authors are not consistent in their usage of the term, (c) many concepts of the public interest are virtually indistinguishable from more general concerns of morality, and (d) there have been few efforts to measure the public interest, none entirely successful. With respect to this latter point, political philosopher Brian Barry’s (1965, 196) idea that “the only really satisfactory way of approaching ‘the public interest’ would be to take a great number of examples of actual uses—from court cases, newspapers, books, speeches, and conversations—and see what could be made of them” has not been taken up by researchers. Most of the many criticisms of the public interest can be traced back to a taproot problem: ambiguity. So long as public interest concepts are hopelessly ambiguous, usage will necessarily be inconsistent, measurement efforts have little likelihood of success, and it will be difficult systematically to consider “a great number of examples.” This ambiguity is one reason (there are more important ones) why the concepts of economics, market failure, and economic individualism have so easily held sway in public deliberations. Compared with Lippman’s definition of the public interest as what men (and women) “would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently ,” the assumptions economists make to advance their theories, assumptions such as perfect information and perfectly competitive markets, seem almost down to earth. This, then, is the conundrum that has faced us since ancient times: that nearly everyone is convinced that the public interest is vital in public policy and governance, but there is little agreement as to exactly what it is. According Richard Flathman, the ambiguity of the public interest is not adequate justification for its abandonment: Public interest is a normative standard, and it raises the whole panoply of problems associated with standards in general. The history of moral philosophy testifies that problems of standards are not easily solved. There is no reason to think that they will be easily solved in the case of the public interest. But difficulty...

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