Discerning the public interest

After not attending a Wolfville planning committee meeting for some time, the prospect of a major event in demanding deliberative democracy drew me to their recent one, held in the school gym, to accommodate the more than 200 citizens that attended.

The democratic theatre that the event promised was forestalled by the committee surrendering its proposals for a significant increase of population density in the town, bowing to a large and seemingly growing opposition. How they got to this point is a case study for students of local politics as, beyond process questions, it raises the issue of what the public interest is and how it is we can come to know it.

The fact that both those who favoured greater density and those who opposed it in Wolfville could claim that their preferred policy would be in the public interest is a measure of the task.

One way of discerning the public interest is via enlightened utilitarianism. You recognize the basic needs of a population (usually an anti-poverty commitment), along with some basic minority rights, and then seek to use what people say will make them happy as the stuff of political decision-making. With such information in hand, one determines which preferences of the population are common and then satisfies these with public policy. Accordingly, support for a decent level of education, personal security, clean water, roads and sidewalks are seen as in the public interest.

But stopping there leaves our much greater potential happiness as citizens unrealized. For instance, suppose a section of the population wants “A” while another wants “B”; suppose the preferences for both are intense; and suppose A and B are achievable without too much pain for others. Instituting both is better than instituting neither, even if the A folks and the B folks don’t share a common interest. Policies A and B are also arguably in the public interest in this way.

Civic virtue

Some contend that the way of getting to the public interest is to ask folks to set aside thinking about their own interests when speaking to issues of public policy and to favour instead what would be good for the community as a whole.

Supporting high quality schools is often a discussion like this, when those who have neither school-aged children nor grandchildren favour more of their tax dollars spent on public education, believing (rightly) that it will lead to a better town and society.

Yet another strategy is to use a thought experiment of the sort offered by the late John Rawls. Suppose, in the Wolfville example, that you’re self-interested, that you wish to maximize what you value. Suppose further that you know a lot about the town, but you’ve forgotten exactly who you are in it.

Are you the single mom looking for decent, reasonably priced, housing? A person trying to find or remain in a house in Wolfville so you can live near where you work or in a community whose values you respect? A developer or real estate agent seeking to excite greater economic growth in the community? A merchant whose livelihood depends upon a critical mass of shoppers or clients? Someone with property (into which you placed your life savings) that is close to a proposed high-density development? A devout environmentalist who believes you are acting irresponsibly unless you take dramatic steps now to save the earth? Or a member of the next generation?

Rawls argues that rational citizens will always act conservatively, moderately, and not gamble in such a decision context; they would decide instead to improve the circumstances of those in the worst situation for fear they would find themselves in such circumstances.

And they would, accordingly, favour those who are affected most negatively by a proposed decision, as long as those they would favour didn’t already enjoy clear advantage in town.

Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” requires that we imagine our lives from the circumstances and values of others, a version of “doing unto others….” It is an admittedly idealized view and it won’t do all the work. But it may be useful nonetheless.

In closing, let me venture that having public meetings of the sort that was finessed in Wolfville recently is one of the ways that, in democracy, we come to see and understand not just the intensity of citizens’ preferences, but also the lives of others, without which knowledge the public interest is just the next guy’s vision of the good.