Problems With The Ex Post or Consequential Approach
The definitions of public interest based on the ex post or consequential approach are unavoidably debatable, leading to ambiguity and confusion.
Based on the ex post approach, for instance, 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. But these extreme views are clearly not very useful in practice, since most cases of public policy involve some people gaining and some people losing.
Nicholas Kaldor and John Hicks offer two alternative but related ways to resolve the problem. The basic concept is that the gainers must gain more than the losers lose. Kaldor stated that the gainers must be able to compensate all the losers and still go along with the change, if the change is in the public interest. Hicks stated that the losers must NOT be able to bribe the gainers from forgoing the change, if the change is good for the public interest. It is observed that the Kaldorian position, if the compensations actually take place, is no different from the Pareto improvement criterion for enhancing social welfare. But if compensations do not actually take place, with gainers merely "potentially compensating the losers," people will not come to a consensus and agree that the change enhances the public interest.
But it should be clear that some acts in the public interest can be bad for some individuals. There may be an agreement that some interests are unique to the public. Stephen Krasner, 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. The ex ante approach to the definition of the public interest would encompass this.
Read more about this topic: Public Interest
Famous quotes containing the words problems with the, problems, post and/or approach:
“I was a wonderful parent before I had children. I was an expert on why everyone else was having problems with theirs. Then I had three of my own.”
—Adele Faber (20th century)
“I respect guilt. It is a dangerous but sometimes useful beast. The guilt that made me want to solve all my children’s problems meant trouble. The guilt that made me question my role in our mother-daughter squabbles proved helpful. Yes, I care about my kids’ problems, and I long to make suggestions. But these days I wait for children to ask for help, and I give it sparingly. Some things can’t be fixed, and I tell them so.”
—Susan Ferraro (20th century)
“Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that the only way to have a friend is to be one. We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion or mistrust or with fear.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)