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Article: Realizing the public interest: reflections on an elusive goal.
- Article from:
- Daedalus
- Article date:
- September 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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One would think that having edited for thirty years a journal titled The Public Interest, I should be clear on what the public interest is, how to determine it, and perhaps how to implement it. But after reading hundreds of articles by scholars, journalists, and public figures who have tried, in one area of public policy after another, to define the policies that would truly promote the public interest, I am only left in greater uncertainty as to how to define it.
Nonetheless, the language to express the public interest, as against all the 'special interests,' is available. No one has done it better than Walter Lippman, when he wrote: "The public interest may be ...