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The Protection of the Public Interest with Special Reference to Administrative Regulation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Emmette S. Redford
Affiliation:
University of Texas

Extract

There are two aspects of the relation between government and interest groups which are of primary significance for the political scientist. One is the realistic approach to the study of interest groups, which gives attention to the demands of groups, their pressure on government, and the ways government yields to or tries to accommodate their conflicting demands. The other is the idealist tradition that the purpose of the state is the common weal, which has been expressed diversely, as for example, in the concepts of salus populi suprema lex and “public office is a public trust.” If these two were necessarily in conflict, we should have to choose between ethical nihilism and utopianism. This paper moves from the assumptions that realism and idealism both have a place in the study of political science, today as in ancient tradition, and that in the study of the particular problem of government control of the economy, analysis of the upward impact of interest pressures and their accommodation through government policies should be supplemented by a search for the best means of strengthening the impact of the concept of the common weal in the decision-making process.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1954

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References

1 Leiserson, Avery, Administrative Regulation: A Study in Representation of Interests (Chicago, 1942), p. 6Google Scholar.

2 The Group Basis of Politics: Notes for a Theory,” thia Review, Vol. 46, pp. 376–97 (June, 1952)Google Scholar. Latham's bibliographical notes range comprehensively through the several academic disciplines.

3 Dewey's, John phrase, The Public and Its Problems (New York, 1927), p. 73Google Scholar.

4 For a fuller summary see my Administration of National Economic Control (New York, 1952), pp. 220–25Google Scholar.

5 Bentley, Arthur E., The Process of Government (Chicago, 1908), p. 269Google Scholar.

6 Herring, E. Pendleton, Public Administration and the Public Interest (New York, 1936), p. 9Google Scholar.

7 Administrative Regulation (cited in note 1), p. 16.

8 The term “new democracy” was used, for example, by Lewis, John D. in “Democratic Planning in Agriculture,” this Review, Vol. 35, pp. 232–49, 454–69, at p. 469 (April, June, 1941)Google Scholar. Walter Gellhorn succinctly stated the point of view expressed in the text when, in discussing lay participation in administration, he concluded: “affected private interests are shaping the course of action. It is Democracy at work.” Federal Administrative Proceedings (Baltimore, 1941), p. 130Google Scholar. But Gellhorn stresses advice as the proper means of participation. Ibid., p. 133. Ordway Tead sets forth “the principle of the representation of interests, which says that every group which has a clearly identifiable set of interests is safeguarded in its dealings with other groups only as it has the opportunity for an explicit voicing of its interests in councils where the common problems of the several groups are under consideration.” New Adventures in Democracy: Practical Applications of the Democratic Idea (New York, 1939), p. 5Google Scholar.

9 See particularly The Legislative Way of Life (Chicago, 1940)Google Scholar; The Democratic Tradition in America (New York, 1951)Google Scholar; Discipline for Democracy (Chapel Hill, 1942)Google Scholar; The Compromise Principle in Politics (“Edmund J. James Lectures on Government: Second Series” [Urbana, 1941])Google Scholar; Compromise: Its Context and Limits,” Ethics, Vol. 53, pp. 113 (Oct., 1942)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent analysis of Smith's theory, by one who opposes it, see Hallowell, John H., The Moral Foundation of Democracy (Chicago, 1954)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

10 Public Administration and the Public Interest, especially p. 16.

11 See the analysis by Truman, David in The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion (New York, 1951)Google Scholar, particularly ch. 16.

12 Compare Gaus', John M. discussion of “The Ecology of Government,” in his Reflections on Public Administration (University, Ala., 1947)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

13 Administrative Regulation, p. 284.

14 Public Administration and the Public Interest, p. 383.

15 Administration of National Economic Control, p. 230.

16 Ibid., p. 232.

17 See particularly Pound, Roscoe, Outlines of Lectures on Jurisprudence, 5th ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1943)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and A Survey of Social Interests,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 57, pp. 139 (1943)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Fainsod, Merle, “Some Reflections on the Nature of the Regulatory Process,” in Public Policy, ed. Friedrich, C. J. and Mason, Edward S., Vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), pp. 298–99Google Scholar. Since writing this paper I have seen Price's, Don K. statement of the reasons why he wrote Government and Science: Their Dynamic Relation in American Democracy (New York, 1954), p. vGoogle Scholar.: “The deeper reason was a notion that had been developing in my mind for several years (not a particularly original one) that the development of public policy and of the methods of its administration owed less in the long run to the processes of conflict among political parties and social or economic pressure groups than to the more objective processes of research and discussion among professional groups.”

19 Or even judicial, as in the case of the next step of the Supreme Court on segregation in education.

20 The statement was recorded from one of his speeches. Smith informs me that it appears in his writings as follows: “The politician is the secular saint of our sinful society one of whose sad businesses it is to keep the self-advertised saints from cutting each others' throats out of the very excess of their saintliness.” The Political Way of Life (Pamphlet of the California Bar Association, 1948), p. 18Google Scholar.

21 For fuller discussion see my Administration of National Economic Control (cited in note 4), pp. 236–51, 255–57, 270–71, 369–71. For other discussions of personnel problems in regulation see Herring, E. Pendleton, Federal Commissioners: A Study of Their Careers and Qualifications (Cambridge, Mass., 1936)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Leiserson's, Avery discussion in Marx, Fritz Morstein, The Elements of Public Administration (New York, 1946)Google Scholar, ch. 14.

22 Administration of National Economic Control, p. 369.

23 Ibid. See also relative to a code of ethics, Ethical Standards in Government, Report of a Subcommittee of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, U. S. Senate, 82nd Cong., 1st sess. (1951); Monypenny, Phillip, “A Code of Ethics for Public Administration,” George Washington Law Review, Vol. 21, pp. 423–44 (March, 1953)Google Scholar and A Code of Ethics as a Means of Controlling Administrative Conduct,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 13, pp. 184–87 (Summer, 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A Code of Public Ethics: Excerpts from a Code Prepared by the Citizens Commission on Ethics in Government, Arlington County, Virginia,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 13, pp. 120–22 (Spring, 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 For fuller discussion of these see pp. 251–57, 272–324, 361–64, ibid. A good discussion of the relation of interest groups and organization, based upon experience in wage stabilization in World War II, is Edelman, Murray, “Governmental Organization and Public Policy,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 12, pp. 276–83 (Autumn, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 See, for example, the argument for a new echelon between the departments and the presidency (including an Executive Secretary for Economic Affairs) by Graham, George in “The Presidency and the Executive Office of the President,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 12, pp. 519621 (Nov., 1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and discussion favorable to a Department of Foreign Affairs with subordinate administrative departments, as a long-run solution to the organizational problem in the conduct of foreign affairs, in The Administration of Foreign Affairs and Overseas Operation: A Report Prepared for the Bureau of the Budget, Executive Office of the President, by the Brookings Institution (Washington, 1951)Google Scholar and in Macmahon, Arthur W., “The Administration of Foreign Affairs,” this Review, Vol. 45, pp. 836–66, especially at p. 846 (Sept., 1951)Google Scholar, and Administration in Foreign Affairs (University, Ala., 1953), pp. 94103Google Scholar.

26 Public Administration and the Public Interest (cited in note 6), p. 9.

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