The Public Interest Reconsidered

Abstract

ATTHE VERY MOMENT WHEN IDEALISTS and realists are disputing the role of morality and interest in international affairs, students of the domestic political process are waging a similar, though less exacerbated, dispute over morality and interest in internal politics. Their debate centers generally on the vadidity and applicability of concepts of the "public interest" to the political process and policy-making. While this concept of the public interest lacks a neat and precise formulation, it has over years of use (and occasional abuse) acquired a pragmatic and functional definition. It has come to signify that public policy alternative which most deserves enactment. It is, in other words, the highest standard of governmental action, the measure of the greatest wisdom or morality in government. To define the public interest in terms of its role or function is, of course, to beg the question of its nature and the validity of its claim to be a policy standard. The validity of this claim of the public interest to superiority over other interests will be the subject of this paper's inquiry. The phrase "public interest," or some variation on its theme, has run through the American political vocabulary since the early years of the Republic. Its defense has traditionally evoked the most lavish flights of Senatorial oratory; statutory delegations of authority have long carried the admonition that administrators should exercise their powers in the public interest; and rare, indeed, is the pressure group that has not at one time or another masqueraded in the disguise of the public interest. In fact, so potent is the phrase, regardless of the elusive nature of its content, that it has become a symbol for righteousness and morality in American politics. Over and beyond the significance of the public interest for the world of practical politics, however, the term has as well a relevance for the scholarly world of political science. Few of the areas of