A Public Interest Criterion

Abstract Abstract Despite its traditional and contemporary importance for planning and other areas of public policymaking, the public interest is often rejected as a vague criterion whose application cannot be rationally defended or empirically verified. Building on contemporary developments in philosophy, this paper suggests that, suitably interpreted, the public interest provides a meaningful, empirically verifiable, and rationally defensible criterion for evaluating public policies, a criterion comparable to those used to evaluate "scientific" theories and hypotheses. By providing a framework for combining technical analysis with the reasoned discussion of ethical issues, the criterion will help planners defend their inevitable ethical decisions on firm rational and empirical grounds.