The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (224 page)

 
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1
The common interest of persons in their capacity as members of the public;
2
the aggregation of the individual interests of the persons affected by a policy or action under consideration. There is an obvious contrast between these two formulations because there is a distinction between a common interest and the aggregation of individual interests. A common interest is a shared interest, whereas an aggregation of individual interests depends upon an on-balance assessment of the position of individuals considered in isolation. The ‘public interest’ has been the subject of three different sorts of scepticism. First, it has been suggested that no coherent account can be given of the meaning of the term. Secondly, it has been suggested that even if such an account could be provided, it is impossible in practice to identify where the public interest lies, to know which policy fits the specification given. Thirdly, political scepticism has doubted whether the practices and institutions of modern politics are such that the public interest is pursued. A powerful contribution to political scepticism has been provided by
public choice
theory. The first formulation of the public interest, above, refers to members of the public. The public is a group of non-specific persons: for example, a public house is licensed to sell alcohol to anyone (by contrast with a private club, which is licensed only to sell to members and guests). In this sense, the individuals constituting the public are inspecific—just anyone qualifies. But the membership of the relevant public when matters of public interest are raised is dependent on the context. For example, there is a public interest in security at airports, and a public interest in safety at sports stadia. While the group of persons using airports and the group of persons attending sports events may overlap, the two groups may be fairly distinct. The idea of the public nevertheless refers to an unknown group of individuals, in the sense that it is not known exactly who might be adversely affected by (for instance) an aircraft hijack or overcrowding in a stadium. The first formulation supposes that persons can share an interest when they consider themselves as potential members of non-specified group, abstracting from their particular positions and private interests. For example, a person who never used airports might put that consideration aside and consider what arrangements for security he or she would favour supposing he or she were a member of the relevant public. This way of looking at the public interest is closely related to
Rousseau's
concept of the
general will
.
The second formulation may be considered as the ‘
cost-benefit
’ approach to the public interest. Adherents of this version deny the coherence or usefulness of the first formulation, and argue that the interest of the public can be no more than the sum of the interests of the relevant individuals, considered in their concrete circumstances. The question of whether a policy is in the public interest is then settled by assessing the potential gains and losses which it is predicted will follow from its adoption.
AR 

 
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First used in its obvious, literal sense in eighteenth-century political thought. Began to acquire a more precise meaning (without losing its general one) with the advent of scientific opinion polling in the 1930s. General statements about public opinion, which often turn out to be the opinion of two taxi-drivers and ten consecutive passers-by, should be treated with caution.

 
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See
PSBR
.

 
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Collective pseudonym adopted by James
Madison
, Alexander
Hamilton
, and John Jay as authors of The Federalist Papers (1787–8). Publius Valerius , according to Plutarch's
Lives
, was a heroic figure responsible for establishing stable republican government in Rome after the fall of Tarquin .
SW 

 
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