Management of Business and Public Organizations
Public administrators are often challenged to differentiate between the "public interest" and the "public's best interest" as they participate in decision-making processes focused on resolving problems. Richard C. Leone (1975), in an early essay on public interest advocacy and public administration, commented that one of the most important tasks of public administration professionals, agencies, and regulatory bodies is to ensure that in vital areas of private activity, the interest of the public is not overridden by private considerations of economic gain. Similarly, according to Leone (1975), public administrators must also examine policies to determine if they fully and meaningfully address broad and comprehensive public interests that are not limited to a small segment of the population or a narrow area of social concern.
The difficulty of distinguishing between the "public interest" and the public's "best interest" was also discussed theoretically by Simon, Smithburg, and Thompson (1976) in an early overview of the functions of public administration. These theorists defined the "public interest" as a vast body of concerns reflecting prevailing as well as idealized notions of "good" and of what must and should be done to resolve social problems that impact specifically on certain groups and generally on society as a whole. More recently, Thomas J. Barth (1992) stated that government policy can be deemed as being in the public's interest if and when it can satisfy six basic constitutive values: legality, morality, logic, responsiveness to the desires of constituents, encompassing of the concerns of various interest groups and addressing long-term effects rather than temporary solutions.
Barth (1992) defines the "public interest" as a term encompassing an ideal condition or state in which the nation as a whole benefits. Programs and their normative policies consequent...