Daily Times

Self-serving agendas do not promote national aspirations and public interest. What is happening around is against national interest of Pakistan. Forces destabilizing government and damaging the image of the state must be taken to task. Immaturity and incapacity cause problems and issues contributing to lack of cooperation and coordination. There is need to understand the meaning of people’s representation and right to govern. Also there is the requirement of correcting wrongs, all wrongs. There is method even in madness. All perceptions are not the truth and reality.

Important responsibility of government is to stay firm in creating an effective environment for the writ of the state. What is happening around is anybody’s guess. To see politics from the grey area between the extremes takes time, energy, patience plus the ability to listen to someone else and to respect their right to speak their mind. Hope should be hope for the right things. Sincerity of purpose has to be convincing and credible. In fact credibility has to be established along with clarity and objectivity of purpose and intentions. Dramatics are on, non-stop all in our view, we are aware, ever since awareness arrived, handling things may not be easy, child’s play as against our assumptions, especially in politics and governance.

Thankfully, emotional detachment empowers to confidently uncover more and more. Engaging by choice, not by demand, enables to dig deeper than ever before. Welcome thoughts and feelings, let them out unhindered, dance with them, and empower them to affect change. Focus on possibilities of success, not the potential for failure. Stay close to reality; make sure your imagination is used not to escape reality, but to create it. Permit yourself a drift for a while, pressure is removed, certainty returns to you for a way forward.

The concept of the public interest logically is irrelevant to decision-making in accordance with idealist theory, in which ultimate obligations and responsibility are nonpolitical

Public interest and national interest remain a focus of scholars of Legal Studies, political Science, organizational Behaviours, psychology, Sociology, public administration and public policy. There is a lot that we learn from the teachings of Sufi saints who have devoted time to emphasize the importance of rightful individual and group behaviors. Their guidance is available on self-analysis, self-correction and correcting perceptions so that good behaviors could be cultivated for a healthy society and polity. Introspection or self-analysis is a healthy way to reform the society and to address social evils to prepare ground for public interest and reforms. If we learn to protect Pakistan’s Public/national interest, we know that other countries have their own interest.

Is there any method for determining who represents whom or what? The important question, then, was not who was right or who represented whom. The question is and in a democratic society it must be answered how are you going to find out? How do you determine the people’s will? The Public interest?

Is there such a thing as “Public interest”? The Public interest By Professor Glendon Schubert of Michigan state university was the first book to examine systematically the statements about the public interest that have appeared in the Literature of political science. It investigates the relationship between the public interest and concept of official behavior, and discusses the use and abuse of the public interest concept by political scientists, politicians, administrations, judges, and private interest groups. On the basis of this examination, Professor Schubert questions the utility and reliability of either “Rationalist”, “Realist” or “idealist” Public-interest theory. It is critical analysis raises fundamental questions about the complex inter-relationship of political theory, political behavior, and scientific inquiry.

The analysis of the theory of public interest has revealed a contrariety of assumptions, conclusions, and concepts, all of which are current in contemporary American political thought. Certain countries could be traced through all five factors in the decision- making schema when this is related to each of the three types of official discretion that was postulated. There remain two tasks to state the major patterns characterizing rationalist, idealist, and realist concepts of public interest, and to consider the parallel findings of other contemporary critics of public interest theory.

The Rationalists are Pro public, Property and anti-interest group. They postulate a common good, which reflects the presumed existence of various common-frequently majoritarian interests. The common good finds expression in a popular will. The idealists are Pro public, antiparty, and anti-interest group. The realists are Pro-interest group. The realists, in other words, do not oppose the public and political parties; they devour them. They believe in Due-Process-Equilibrium realism. They want direct attention to the competition among multifarious interest group.

Psychological realists apply the concept of official mediation to congressman, the president, administrators, and judges alike. There is a close functional relationship, however, among politicization, constituency size, and the limits of official horizon. In Harlan Cleveland’s image, the president stands a little higher on the mountain than anyone else, and consequently can see further; Decisions that are the product of full consideration are must likely to be decision in the public interest. Model of “administrative due process” has not been applied to decision-makers at top levels as it appears to be a function of bureaucratization of congressional, presidential, and judicial decision-making process. In this context, the potential extension of the public-interest theory of due process equilibrium realists is correspondingly enhanced.

The responsible decision-makers first must identify the kind of decision-making Process he/she is expected to employ; the concept of public-interest appropriate to guide decision could then, it would seem to follow, readily be determined.

The concept of the public interest logically is irrelevant to decision-making in accordance with idealist theory, in which ultimate obligations and responsibility are nonpolitical. It is neither to the public nor to hierarchical superiors nor to the affected clientele that the decision-maker looks for guidance, his responsibility lies in faithfulness to his/her personal perception of other abstractions, such as “justice” that are least equally as devoid of a predictable content as the public interest. Realists advise the decision-maker that his job is to resolve the conflicting claims of competing interest groups, and to keep the boat from rocking so for as possible.

The study under review could be a model for a new study in a new selected situation of decision-making, that was my intent while writing this review.

The writer is the former director of National Institute of Administration (NIPA), Government of Pakistan