[ALSC-Forum] Identifying interests

[Riel.MILLER]

Regarding Bruce's list of interests:

I thought it might be worth pointing, just briefly, that there is a fourth
"interest" that you don't quite capture - it is the common or public
interest that is more than just the sum of individual interests or company
interests.  Usually this public interest isn't obvious at first but
eventually the overall value of say an educated population or of a cleaner
environment, beyond what an individuals or companies on their own might
want, becomes evident.  

Initially these collective interests are difficult to identify and estimate.
But that's what democratic processes are about - a way of articulating and
pursuing these broader collective interests.  Of course this "fourth"
interest doesn't in any way diminish the importance of finding ways of
expressing the other interests in the mix (although the desire for control -
a rather generic interest - might be dropped from the list of "interest
groups").  

Maybe what this underscores is the challenge of finding ways of expressing
collective interests at a global level when the vehicles for articulating
and pursuing such interests are weak or non-existent. This democratic
deficit certainly compounds the difficulty of addressing the challenge of
how to best represent individual, corporate and national interests.  None of
which are necessarily equivalent to the global collective interest.  Maybe,
like the division of power approach familiar to all of us, the solution
would be to have different houses - a congress, a senate and a court -
reflecting the different interests.  The congress could be directly elected
globally, the senate might be elected from government and business nominees
and a judiciary might be the World Court.  I apologize if this approach has
already been discussed - I have not followed all of the threads.

Riel