ABSTRACT
Advocates of the regulation of private industry are predisposed to believe that public agencies can achieve their regulatory aims, that the state has the capacity to be successful. Such an attitude can no longer be treated as axiomatic. In the last thirty or so years there has arisen a substantial literature which challenges the very possibility of public agencies delivering public purposes. The very idea of the achievement of the ‘public interest’ as a realizable objective has been systematically derided and attacked in this literature.
