scholarly journals Special Interests versus the Public Interest in Policy Determination

10.1596/28251 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon C. Rausser ◽  
Gérard Roland

1933 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 899-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Pendleton Herring

In the juristic sphere, the Interstate Commerce Commission is charged with enforcing and interpreting certain statutes, hearing and weighing evidence, and rendering formal judgment when the facts have been ascertained. But the recognized judicial character of this work does not render the Commission immune from efforts to influence its judgments. The struggles of contending economic groups and political influences give rise to actions intolerable in a court of law and to repeated efforts to obtain favorable decisions through the use of propaganda. The Commission performs its duties in surroundings far from neutral, and must cope with pressures too powerful to be exorcised by simple exhortation or condemnation. The problem is one of canalizing influences which cannot be eliminated, to the end that they may increase rather than decrease the efficiency of the administrative process and that the public interest may not be submerged in the undertow of sectional and political cross-currents.



Congress ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 290-300
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ginsberg ◽  
Kathryn Wagner Hill

This chapter looks at several common complaints about Congress. When Americans are asked why they have a negative image of the Congress, three factors appear to stand out. First, Congress is seen as having slow and cumbersome procedures that interfere with “getting the job done.” Second, Congress is seen as polarized, with members unwilling to develop the compromises needed to serve the public interest. Third, Congress is seen as corrupt, serving lobbyists, special interests, and campaign contributors rather than the American people. The chapter thus considers whether these charges amount to a serious indictment of Congress, its members, and its procedures.



2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-150
Author(s):  
Andrea Capussela

A promising approach to analyse the phenomena usually described as 'state capture' may be drawn from the literature on 'institutions', 'social orders', and the 'collective action problem'. These studies seem broader and more theoretically persuasive than the literature that confines itself to the notion of 'state capture', and this is especially true in respect of the Balkans, in whose societies it is often hard to draw a fine line between the 'captured' state and its 'captors'. Seen through the lens of those strands of literature, the phenomena usually described as state capture appear to be more widespread than is currently assumed, as they also surface in advanced democracies, and behind them typically lie collective action problems, which prevent the public interest from imposing itself over special interests.





2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oyvind Ihlen ◽  
Ketil Raknes ◽  
Ian Somerville ◽  
Chiara Valentini ◽  
Charlotte Stachel ◽  
...  

How do lobbyists get their way and what is the consequence for democracy of their strategies? It is frequently asserted that lobbyists appeal to the public interest to strengthen their proposals. This paper empirically corroborates this claim through four case studies cutting across different European cultural clusters and political systems. The paper unpacks how businesses communicatively construct a link between their private interest and the public interest. The findings illustrate the flexibility of the public interest argument and hence also the potential problem. If everything can be made out to be in the public interest, the concept becomes empty and easy to capture for special interests. At the same time, unpacking the communicative construction helps in critically evaluating lobbyists’ claims of working in the public interest.



1983 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-49
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  


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