Abstract
Transparency is viewed as a self-evident good in Western society. Etzioni reexamines the theoretical assumptions underlying the thesis that transparency plays a major role in holding democratic governments accountable. His analysis reveals that transparency plays a much smaller role than is often assumed. In addition, Etzioni finds that transparency cannot be relied upon to replace regulation, both because it is, itself, a form of regulation and because of the way in which democracies actually function. In assessing transparency, one must take into account a continuum composed of the order of disutility and the level of information costs. The higher the score on both variables, the less useful transparency is. Moreover, these scores need not be particularly high to greatly limit the extent to which the public can rely on transparency for most purposes.
I am indebted to Rory Donnelly for research assistance and to Erin Syring for comments on a previous draft. An earlier version has been published in the Public Administration Review (Volume 74, Issue 6 November/December 2014, 687–688).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Corporate Reform Coalition. ‘Support for Reform of Corporate Political Spending Practices,’ Bannon Communications Research, October 18, 2012. Accessed at http://www.citizen.org/documents/bannon-communications-research-executive-summary.pdf.
- 2.
Jeffrey M. Jones, ‘Americans Remain Divided on Role They Want Gov’t to Play,’ Gallup, September 19, 2013 http://www.gallup.com/poll/164444/americans-remain-divided-role-gov-play.aspx.
- 3.
Fleming , Joseph Z. and Joes I. Leon. 2008. ‘The Federal Government in the Sunshine Act: A Federal Mandate for Open Meetings,’ The Florida Bar, August. http://www.floridabar.org/DIVCOM/PI/RHandbook01.nsf/1119bd38ae090a748525676f0053b606/33db31567bc6b028852569cb004c8736!OpenDocument.
- 4.
Mike Mansick. ‘Large Coalition of Tech Companies and Advocacy Groups Demand Greater Transparency About NSA Surveillance,’ TechDirt, September 30, 2013. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130930/12195224700/large-coalition-tech-companies-advocacy-groups-demand-greater-transparency-about-nsa-surveillance.shtml; Center for Democracy and Technology. 2013. ‘Coalition of Major Internet Companies and Advocates Rallies Around Surveillance Transparency Legislation,’ September 30. https://cdt.org/press/coalition-of-major-internet-companies-and-advocates-rallies-around-surveillance-transparency-legislation/.
- 5.
For further evidence of this claim, see Democratic National Committee, “Open Government,” http://www.democrats.org/issues/open_government Accessed March 5, 2014.
- 6.
‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies,’ White House, Office of the Press Secretary, March 9, 2009.
- 7.
Jordy Yaeger (2011) ‘Watchdogs say Obama has not done enough on government transparency,’ The Hill, December 25, 2011. Accessed at http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/201295-watchdogs-say-obama-has-not-done-enough-on-transparency; John Dickerson, ‘Obama’s New Toy,’ Slate, November 14. 2008, accessed at http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2008/11/obamas_new_toy.html; David Sobel (2009) ‘Obama’s Transparency Promise: We’re Still Waiting,’ Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 19; Eric Lithbau (2010) ‘Report Faults U.S.’s Efforts at Transparency,” The New York Times, March 14, 2010; Sharon Theimer (2010) ‘Obama’s Broken Promise: Federal Agencies Not More Transparent Under Obama Administration,’ The Huffington Post, March 17.
- 8.
‘The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report,’ Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, January 2011, accessed at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf.
- 9.
See also Carson Griffis (2011) ‘Ending a Peculiar Evil: The Constitution, Campaign Finance Reform, and the Need for Change in Focus after Citizens United v. FEC,’ John Marshall Law Review 773: 773 (“disclosure requirements are a more agreeable and workable method of reform” than spending caps, as they “help combat the negative effects that reformers believe money has on campaigns by allowing voters to keep candidates and contributors in check” and better informing voters about “the ideology and policy of candidates”).
- 10.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).
- 11.
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, 572 U.S. (2014).
- 12.
See also Torres-Spelliscy (2011): abstract : “in order for voters to make informed choices at the ballot box, they must know who is paying for each side of a political fight. Campaign finance disclosure and disclaimer laws should be adopted at the federal level to achieve this end”. Hasen 2014: 14: “a ‘strong disclosure regime, which deters corruption and provides valuable information to voters,’ is a vital aspect of campaign finance reform”.
- 13.
‘UN rights experts call for transparency in the use of armed drones, citing risks of illegal use,’ United Nations News Centre, October 25, 2013, accessed at http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=46338&Cr=terror&Cr1=drone#.Usw_o9KIxJk.
- 14.
See also Sunstein 2010: “Each new step is a small mark toward making the government more accountable to the public. Each new set of information making public in easy to read formats, and each removal of arcane barriers to participation helps to restore the confidence of the American people and their government and also to improve its management and operation”.
- 15.
“Freedom of Information Act Exemptions,” United States Department of Justice, Accessed April 8, 2015 at http://www.justice.gov/
- 16.
‘Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney,” White House Office of the Press Secretary, May 10, 2013.
- 17.
“COPE,” United Federation of Teachers, 2015, http://www.uft.org/political-action/cope; “Americans For Prosperity,” 2015, http://americansforprosperity.org/; “Democracy Alliance,” http://www.democracyalliance.org/.
- 18.
See also David G. Robinson et al. (2009: 160) who argue that the government should “understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites” to be “the core” of its “online publishing responsibility,” as “Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data” […] “As long as there is vigorous competition between third party sites […] we expect most citizens will be able to find a site provider they trust”). See also Adam Liptak, “A Blockbuster Case Yields an Unexpected Result,” New York Times, September 19 2011 (Richard Hasen argues that “If all I tell you about a candidate is that he is backed by the N.R.A. or Planned Parenthood, that is all many voters need to know… The disclosure serves a shortcut function”).
- 19.
‘Conclusions of The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission,’ Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, 2011, accessed at http://fcic.law.stanford.edu/report/conclusions. See also Hau et al. (2013).
Work Cited
Alexander, Herbert, and Brian Haggerty. 1981. The Federal Election Campaign Act: After a Decade of Political Reform. Washington, DC: Citizens’ Research Foundation.
Austin, J. Matthew, et al. 2015. National Hospital Ratings Systems Share Few Common Scores and May Generate Confusion Instead of Clarity. Health Affairs 34 (3): 423–430.
Barber, Benjamin R. 1984. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Oakland: University of California Press.
Bastedo, Michael N., and Nicholas A. Bowman. 2010. U.S. News & World Report College Rankings: Modeling Institutional Effects on Organizational Reputation. American Journal of Education 116 (2): 163–183.
Beam, Christopher. 2008. The TMI Presidency. Slate, November 12. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2008/11/the_tmi_presidency.html.
Bertot, John C., et al. 2010. Using ICTs to Create a Culture of Transparency: E-government and Social Media as Openness and Anti-corruption Tools for Societies. Government Information Quarterly 27: 264–271.
Besley, Timothy, and Stephen Coate. 2000. Issue Unbundling via Citizens’ Initiatives. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, Working Paper no. 8036, December. http://www.international.ucla.edu/cms/files/besley_coate.pdf.
Brito, Jerry, and Drew Perrault. 2009. Transparency and Performance in Government. Working paper no. 09-38, Mercatus Center.
Buchanan, James M., and Gordon Tullock. 1962. The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Cillizza, Chris. 2013. The Least Productive Congress Ever. The Washington Post, July 17. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/17/the-least-productive-congress-ever/.
Clarke, Paul A.B., and Andrew Linzey. 1996. Dictionary of Ethics, Theology and Society. London: Routledge.
Coglianese, Cary et al. 2008. Transparency and Public Participation in the Rulemaking Process: A Nonpartisan Presidential Transition Task Force Report. University of Pennsylvania Law School, July.
Colman, Andrew M. 2008. Lexicographic Choice. In A Dictionary of Psychology, 3rd ed., 420. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Consumer Reports. 2013. The Truth About Angie’s List, Yelp, and more. September. http://www.consumerreports.org.
Dawes, Sharon S. 2010. Stewardship and Usefulness: Policy Principles for Information-Based Transparency. Government Information Quarterly 27 (4): 377–383.
Evans, Jocelyn A.J. 2004. Voters & Voting: An Introduction. London: Sage Publications.
Fenster, Mark. 2005. The Opacity of Transparency. Iowa Law Review 91: 885–949.
Finel, Bernard I., and Kristin M. Lord. 1999. The Surprising Logic of Transparency. International Studies Quarterly 43: 315–339.
Fung, Archon, Mary Graham, and David Weil. 2007. Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Furnas, Alexander. 2014. Why Representative Democracies Can’t Write Off Transparency. The Atlantic, January 16. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/why-representative-democracies-cant-write-off-transparency/283143/.
Garrett, R. Sam. 2014. The State of Campaign Finance Policy: Recent Developments and Issues for Congress. Congressional Research Service, June 23.
Gilbert, Elizabeth. 2001. The William J. Brennan Lecture in Constitutional Law: The Future of Campaign Finance Laws in the Courts and in Congress. Working Paper No. 19 in the Chicago Public Law Working Paper Series, Oklahoma City University Law School.
Gilbert, Michael D. 2012. Campaign Finance Disclosure and the Information Tradeoff. Iowa Law Review 98: 1847–1894.
Ginsberg, Wendy R. 2011 The Obama Administration’s Open Government Initiative: Issues for Congress. Congressional Research Service, January 28; ii, 14; http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/R41361.pdf.
Hale, Thomas N. 2008. Transparency, Accountability, and Global Governance. Global Governance 14: 73–94.
Harper, Jim. 2011. Publication Practices for Transparent Government. CATO Institute Briefing Paper no. 121, September 23. http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp121.pdf.
———. 2013. Addressing Transparency in the Federal Bureaucracy: Moving Toward a More Open Government. Cato Institute, March 13.
Hasen, Richard L. 2014. Three Wrong Progressive Approaches (and One Right One) to Campaign Finance Reform. Harvard Law & Policy Review 21: 21–37.
Hau, Harald, Sam Langfield, and David Marques-Ibanez. 2013. Bank Ratings: What Determines Their Quality? Economic Policy (April): 289–333.
Heald, David. 2006. Varieties of Transparency. In Transparency: The Key to Better Governance? ed. Christopher Hood and David Heald, 23–45. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heerwig, Jennifer, and Katherine Shaw. 2014. Through a Glass, Darkly: The Rhetoric and Reality of Campaign Finance Disclosure. Georgetown Law Journal 102: 1443–1500.
Hood, Christopher. 2006. Transparency in Historical Perspective. In Transparency: The Key to Better Governance? 3–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horwitz, Sari, and James V. Grimaldi. 2010. ATF’s Oversight Limited in Face of Gun Lobby. The Washington Post, October 26. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102505823.html; http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030625/0158245.shtml.
Islam, Roumeen. 2006. Does More Transparency Go Along with Better Governance? Economics & Politics 18 (2): 121–167.
Kahneman, Daniel, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky. 1982. Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Korte, Gregory. 2013. IRS Assailed from All Sides for Lack of Transparency. USA Today, August 19. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/08/18/irs-transparency-tea-party/2668193/.
Kuhne, Cecil C. 2004. Rethinking Campaign-Finance Reform: The Pressing Need for Deregulation and Disclosure. John Marshall Law Review, 633–647.
Levy, Lili. 2012. Plan B for Campaign Finance Reform: Can the FCC Help Save American Politics After Citizens United? Catholic University Law Review 61 (1): 97–173.
Madison, James. 1787. The Federalist no. 10. The Federalist Papers 78.
———. 1822. Letter to W.T. Barry, August 4 1822. In The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings, ed. Saul K. Padover, 1953. New York: Harper.
Manin, Bernard, Adam Prszeworski, and Susan C. Stokes. 1999. Elections and Representation. In Democracy Accountability, and Representation, ed. Adam Prszeworski, Susan C. Stokes, and Bernard Manin, 29–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mansick, Mike. 2003. Web Privacy Policies Confuse Net Surfers. TechDirt, June 25.
———. 2012. To Read All of the Privacy Policies You Encounter, You’d Need to Take a Month Off from Work Each Year. TechDirt, April 23. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120420/10560418585/to-read-all-privacy-policies-you-encounter-youd-need-to-take-month-off-work-each-year.shtml.
Maravall, Jose Maria. 1999. Accountability and Manipulation. In Democracy Accountability, and Representation, ed. Adam Prszeworski, Susan C. Stokes, and Bernard Manin, 154–196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
May, Albert L. 2002. The Virtual Trail: Political Journalism on the Internet. Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/The-practice of-journalism/pp-online-journalist.pdf.
McDevitt, Ryan C. 2011. Names and Reputations: An Empirical Analysis. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 3 (3): 193–209.
Meijer, Albert. 2009. Understanding Modern Transparency. International Review of Administrative Sciences 75 (2): 255–269.
Melone, Matthew A. 2010. Citizens United and Corporate Political Speech: Did the Supreme Court Enhance Political Discourse or Invite Corruption? DePaul Law Review 60: 29–97.
Moss, Michael. 2013. Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. New York: Random House.
O’Neill, Onora. 2009. Ethics for Communication? European Journal of Philosophy 17 (2): 167–180.
Obama, Barack. 2009a. Executive Order 13489—Presidential Records. January 21. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrderPresidentialRecords/.
———. 2009b. Executive Order 13562—Classified National Security Information. December 29. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-classified-national-security-information.
Piotrowski, Suzanne J., and Erin Borry. 2010. An Analytic Framework for Open Meetings and Transparency. Public Administration and Management 15 (1): 138–176.
Piotrowski Suzanne, J., and Gregg G. Van Ryzin. 2007. Citizen Attitudes Toward Transparency in Local Government. The American Review of Public Administration 37 (3): 306–323.
Prat, Andrea. 2005. The Wrong Kind of Transparency. The American Economic Review 95 (3): 862–877.
Robinson, David G. et al. (2009: 160). Government Data and the Invisible Hand. Yale Journal of Law & Technology 11: 159–175.
Rosendorff, Peter B. 2004. Democracy and the Supply of Transparency. Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. March 14. http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/rosendorff/Transparency.pdf.
Sen, Amartya. 1987. Food and Freedom. Sir John Crawford Memorial Lecture, Washington, DC, October 29. http://library.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10947/556/craw3.pdf?sequence.pdf.
Simon, Herbert A. 1955. A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice. ’ Quarterly Journal of Economics 69: 99–118.
Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2002. Transparency in Government. In The Right to Tell: The Role of Mass Media in Economic Development, ed. Alisa Clapp-Itnyre, Roumeen Islam, and Caralee McLiesh, 27–44. Washington: World Bank Publications.
Sunstein, Cass. 1999. Informational Regulation and Informational Standing: Akins and Beyond. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 147: 613–675.
———. 2010. The Power of Open Government. Speech, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, March 10.
———. 2012. The White House vs. Red Tape. Wall Street Journal, April 30.
Szper, Rebecca. 2013. Playing to the Test: Organizational Responses to Third Party Ratings. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 24 (4): 935–952.
Torres-Spelliscy, Ciara. 2011. Hiding Behind the Tax Code, the Dark Election of 2010 and Why Tax-Exempt Entities Should Be Subject to Robust Federal Campaign Finance Disclosure Laws. Nexus: Chapman’s Journal of Law & Policy 16: 59–98.
Vishwanath, Tara, and Daniel Kaufmann. 2001. Toward Transparency: New Approaches and Their Application to Financial Markets. The World Bank Research Observer 16: 41–57.
Wald, Matthew L. 2012. Slow Responses Cloud a Window into Washington. The New York Times, January 28.
Weil, David, et al. 2006. The Effectiveness of Regulatory Disclosure Policies. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 25 (1): 155–181.
Zweig, Jason. 2009. About Time: Regulation Based on Human Nature. The Wall Street Journal, June 20.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Etzioni, A. (2018). The Limits of Transparency. In: Alloa, E., Thomä, D. (eds) Transparency, Society and Subjectivity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77161-8_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77161-8_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77160-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77161-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)