Reflections on Defining the Public Interest

Abstract

The definition and nature of the public interest is an ongoing area of debate and controversy among public administration scholars and practitioners. This article’s main thesis is that there exists an identifiable public interest entailing both normative and pragmatic elements that should be a foundational concern of every practicing public administrator. The administrator’s duty entails three factors: (a) the fiduciary duties to the commons as defined and constrained by constitutional principles, (b) policies that are congruent with our democratic values, and (c) the practice of nonidiosyncratic and universalized ethical administrative leadership and decision making. The article addresses this much maligned and dismissed topic by tracing its historical development focusing on the various lenses, working definitions, characteristics, and typologies of the public interest and illustrating their application in a case study of the Federal Communications Commission. The authors conclude with summary reflections and implications for public administration and public policy.

Governments’ functions in the process of integrated consolidation and allocation of rural–urban construction land in China

“…Different stakeholders have different status, resources, and other characteristics, thus interest imbalance inevitably exists among stakeholders. Interest balance is impossible to achieve without exercise of executive power (King et al, 2010). Farmers, the weakest stakeholder in this process, usually do not have enough knowledge and effective means to protect their interests.…”

Banking for the common good: A Lonerganian perspective

“…However, while the use of public interest is well established in financial regulation, and its etymology discussed with great vigour in the accounting literature (Dellaportas and Davenport, 2008;Baker, 2005 etc. ), the term itself lacks an empirical referent (King et al, 2010). Indeed, according to O'Regan (2010) "the essentially contestable nature of the term" public interest gives regulators the freedom to hone the concept to promote their personal mission (p. 301).…”

The 2016 John Gaus Lecture: The New Guerrilla Government: Are Big Data, Hyper Social Media and Contracting Out Changing the Ethics of Dissent?

“…Ethics is the study of values and how to define right and wrong action (Cooper 2001; 2012; Menzel 1999; Van Wart 1996). Scholars have analyzed personal ethics (Bowman and Wall 1997; Nieuwenburg 2014; Lavena 2016), organizational ethics (Zajac and Comfort 1997; Van Der Wal 2011; Andersen and Jakobsen 2016); professional ethics (Cooper 2004; Christensen and Laegreid 2011; Fattah 2011; Menzel 2015; Peffer 2015; Downe, Cowell, and Morgan 2016; Weimer and Vining 2016), regime values (Rohr 1988; Piotrowski 2014); and public service ethics (Bowman and Wall 1997; Brewer and Selden 1998; King, Chilton, and Roberts 2010; Dur and Zoutenbier 2014; Caillier 2015; Stazyk and Davis 2015; Wright, Hassan, and Park 2016).…”