The public interest refers to the "common well-being" or "general welfare." The public interest is central to policy debates, politics, democracy and the nature of government itself. While nearly everyone claims that aiding the common well-being or general welfare is positive, there is little, if any, consensus on what exactly constitutes the public interest.
Ambiguities of the concept
There are different views on how many members of the public must benefit from an action before it can be declared to be in the public interest: at one extreme, an action has to benefit every single member of society in order to be truly in the public interest; at the other extreme, any action can be in the public interest as long as it benefits some of the population and harms none.
Put simply; to be in the public interest a matter might have the potential to adversely affect any person at any time in their life in any situation if a core matter is not put into the public arena or handled in a more reasonable way when the problem clearly becomes evident as symptomatic of an underlying unreasonableness.
It is possible for acts in the public interest to be bad for given individuals and vice versa. This definition allows us to "hold constant" private interests in order to determine those interests that are unique to the public. Stephen Krasner Stephen Krasner is an international relations professor at Stanford University and is the former Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State, a position he held from 2005 until April 2007 while on leave from Stanford, a political scientist used a similar methodology in his book Defending the National Interest. Krasner identifies cases in which no corporate interest is found in US foreign policy in order to identify and analyze a national interest.
United Kingdom public interest law
In law, public interest is a defence against certain lawsuits (for instance some libel Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, slander , and libel (for written or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. It is usually, but not always, a suits in the United Kingdom) and an exemption from certain laws or regulations (for instance freedom of information Freedom of information legislation are rules that guarantee access to data held by the state. They establish a "right-to-know" legal process by which requests may be made for government-held information, to be received freely or at minimal cost, barring standard exceptions. Also variously referred to as open records or (especially in the laws in the UK).
Also, judges in common law Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals , rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action. A "common law system" is a legal system that gives great precedential weight to common law, on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different systems can make judgements on the grounds of public policy Public policy is the body of principles that underpin the operation of legal systems in each state. This addresses the social, moral and economic values that tie a society together: values that vary in different cultures and change over time. Law regulates behaviour either to reinforce existing social expectations or to encourage constructive, a related term.
See also
- Common good The common good is a term that can refer to several different concepts. In the popular meaning, the common good describes a specific "good" that is shared and beneficial for all members of a given community. This is also how the common good is broadly defined in philosophy, ethics, and political science
- Condorcet paradox
- National interest The national interest, often referred to by the French term raison d'État, is a country's goals and ambitions whether economic, military, or cultural. The notion is an important one in international relations where pursuit of the national interest is the foundation of the realist school
- Pareto optimality Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality, is an important concept in economics with broad applications in game theory, engineering and the social sciences. The term is named after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution. Informally, Pareto efficient situations are
Categories: Political terms Categories: Terminology | Sociolinguistics | Politics
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