Transparency and Secrecy in European Democracies

Contested Trade-offs

Dorota Mokrosinska

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429649431
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia europea

This edited volume offers a critical discussion of the trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in the actual political practice of democratic states in Europe. As such, it answers to a growing need to systematically analyse the problem of secrecy in governance in this political and geographical context.

Focusing on topical cases and controversies in particular areas, the contributors reflect on the justification and limits of the use of secrecy in democratic governance, register the social, cultural, and historical factors that inform this process and explore the criteria used by European legislators and policy-makers, both at the national and supranational level, when balancing interests on the sides of transparency and secrecy, respectively.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of security studies, political science, European politics/studies, law, history, political philosophy, public administration, intelligence studies, media and communication studies, and information technology sciences.

Part I
The drive to transparency

1 The Janus face of transparency
Balancing openness and secrecy in democratic decision-making

Jenny de Fine Licht¹

Jeremy Bentham (Bentham et al. 1999, p. 29) famously claimed that publicity is “the fittest law for securing the public confidence”. Today, Bentham’s idea – its contemporary equivalent being the concept of “transparency”² – is more alive than ever. Both researchers and policymakers often take for granted that the transparency of political processes is a condition of their perceived legitimacy and trustworthiness of office-holders; a key to securing public acceptance of political decisions and confidence in the system’s representatives. Despite the widespread character of this conviction, empirical research on the role of transparency in enhancing public trust in and the perceived legitimacy of political systems remains inconclusive (for an overview, see Cucciniello et al. 2017).

Without questioning that transparency should be the default option in public affairs (see, e.g. Bok 1989; Gutmann and Thompson 1996; Stiglitz 2003; Chambers 2004; Prat 2006), this chapter takes a critical approach to the common assumption that increased transparency in political decision- making generates public trust in political decisions and increases their legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens. The discussion unfolds as follows. The first part of the chapter explores four influential explanations for how transparency in political decision-making appears to increase the perceived legitimacy of political decisions within a representative democratic system. According to the first, transparent decision-making processes are more legitimate and credible because they allegedly produce decisions and policies of better quality. Second, transparent decision-making processes are legitimate and credible because they are perceived as procedurally fair. Third, transparency increases the perceived legitimacy of political decision-making and the trustworthiness of office-holders because it is believed to increase public understanding of the contexts, constraints, and trade-offs involved in decision-making processes. Finally, transparency has these effects because it is thought to enhance people’s belief that they can effectively call decision-makers to account. The discussion below shows that none of the four mechanisms is as straightforward as the common wisdom has it: there are circumstances in which transparency may have adverse effects. The upshot is that democratic governance needs a proper measure of transparency rather than complete transparency. In its second part, the chapter discusses how the advantages of transparency in public affairs can be balanced against its potentially negative effects. This part highlights the potential benefits of a limited type of transparency which postulates publicity with regard to the justifications of political decisions rather than publicity with regard to the process through which they are taken, along the line of Jane Mansbridge’s distinction between “transparency in rationale” and “transparency in process” (Mansbridge 2009).

Transparency as the key to legitimacy and trust

Although critics of (radical) transparency and transparency sceptics have been around for a while (e.g. Moore and Tumin 1949; Bok 1989; Heald 2006a; O’Neill 2006; Etzioni 2010; Worthy 2010), the largest share of transparency scholarship tends to highlight the positive effects of increased transparency. Generally, transparency is claimed to contribute to legitimate and credible government (see, e.g. Cucciniello et al. 2017). This section critically explores and evaluates four influential explanations, commonly invoked in the literature, to support this view. For analytical reasons, they are presented separately even though, in reality, they point to mechanisms that may be connected and intertwined.

Transparency increases the quality and efficiency of decision-making

According to Jeremy Bentham (Bentham and Bowring 1843, p. 145), “the eye of the public makes the statesman virtuous”. One influential explanation for why transparency can increase the perceived legitimacy of and public trust in political systems draws on this insight. The claim is that under the eye of the people, decision-makers will act more responsibly and make decisions and policies of high(er) quality; a turn that will be acknowledged by the public and make it more willing to trust the decision-makers and perceive the decision-making process as legitimate.³ The logic behind this argument is straightforward. Since the public has the ultimate power to remove the decision-makers from office, exposure to the public view will give them a strong incentive to look credible and trustworthy in the eyes of the audience. Thus, in open decision-making settings, office-holders will be more concerned with collecting and scrutinising all the necessary facts about the issue at hand and will refrain from corrupt behaviour. Subject to public view, they will try to persuade their political opponents by presenting their opinion as morally correct rather than negotiate or bargain on fixed preferences. Open settings will push them to transcend narrow, selfish, or sectarian motivations, and to articulate their claims in terms of the public interest.⁴ In general, as Jon Elster put it, transparency will have a “civilising effect” on political elites (Elster 1998; see also Chambers 2004, 2005; Naurin 2007). The positive effect of transparency on the quality of decision-making will, in line with the argument, subsequently feed back into public perceptions of the political system and enhance people’s perception of its legitimacy and credibility.

While few would question the claim that transparency may have civilising effects on political decision-making, a number of studies indicate the dangers of the diminishing returns of transparency. First, exposing decision-making processes to the public is costly, both in terms of professional workload and financial resources (e.g. Coremans 2020). The more requirements for formal procedures, documentation, reporting, and registration there are, the more time decision-makers have to spend in meetings, the more personnel are needed to write minutes, to engage in archiving, and to communicate with the press, and the more resources need to be spent on supporting infrastructures such as web pages and search functions. Second, transparency may negatively influence the quality of political deliberation and disrupt efficient decision-making (e.g. Elster 1998; Mansbridge 2009). For example, open settings may affect the strategies of negotiating parties by triggering concerns about how their arguments will affect their re-election. What follows are plebiscitary rhetoric, posturing, and excessively hard-line positions that are meant to demonstrate loyalty to constituencies, and that put compromise under strain. Decision-makers might become more interested in signalling loyalty to their constituencies and special interest groups (Stasavage 2007) or avoiding blame for policy decisions or their effects (Hood 2007) rather than actually listening to each other (Steiner et al. 2004) and finding the optimal solutions to the policy issues to hand. In front of an audience, office-holders may find it difficult to change their opinion even in the light of good arguments, to present dissenting views, or to ask necessary but seemingly unintelligent questions (e.g. Elster 1998; Meade and Stasavage 2006; Mansbridge 2009). As a consequence, the discussion might turn shallow (Chambers 2004, 2005) and compromises might be more difficult to reach. Decision-making might become inefficient and important action might be delayed.

Inefficiencies and delays in the decision-making process should not be taken lightly because they undermine what Mark Warren and Jane Mansbridge (2013, p. 87) call the political system’s “capacity to act”, i.e. its efficiency in taking decisions and implementing policies. Capacity to act is related to what is sometimes called output legitimacy, i.e. legitimacy that stems from the political system’s ability to fulfil goals that the public cares about (Scharpf 1999), rather than from input-related factors such as the participatory quality of the decision-making process. The consequences of a presumed inability to deliver results are potentially devastating: if people cannot trust that political decision-making will deliver outcomes in a reasonable timeframe, people’s perception of the legitimacy of the system, and incentive for political participation may decrease.

In sum, a fully transparent procedure bears the risk of delivering less optimal decisions and policies than if the decision-making process is kept comparatively secret. To the extent that public perceptions of the legitimacy of political decisions actually depend on their high quality a decision-making process that is not fully transparent might generate higher levels of perceived legitimacy and trust in the long run.

Transparency is perceived as fairer than secrecy

According to another common argument, transparency in decision-making may increase the perceived legitimacy of a political system because transparent political processes are likely to be perceived as fairer than secret processes (see, e.g. de Fine Licht 2014b for discussion). This argument is inspired by social psychological research on procedural fairness showing that people are more likely to accept decisions which are arrived at by a procedure that they perceive to be fair and are more satisfied with authorities and institutions which use such procedures, even if they disagree with the actual content of the decisions (e.g. Thibaut and Walker 1975; Lind and Tyler 1988; Tyler 1997, 2006, 2010; Napier and Tyler 2008). Public perceptions of the fairness of a process are heavily influenced by, for instance, whether one has had the chance to have a say (a voice) in the process, whether one perceives that decision-making is carried out in a consistent and unbiased way, and whether one perceives that one has been treated with dignity and respect (e.g. Lupfer et al. 2000; Tyler 2000; Colquitt 2001). These elements of procedural fairness can all be linked to the transparency of a political process.⁵ For example, people may believe that they have better chances of providing input (a voice) into a process if it is carried out transparently, and they may interpret decision-makers’ willingness to open up the process as a signal of respect for the public. Transparent decision-making processes are therefore likely to be perceived as fair and, following the logic of the procedural fairness argument, this perception will spill over to perceptions about decisions and decision-makers, thereby contributing to the perceived legitimacy of the political system.

The argument that transparent political processes will be perceived as fair and, accordin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: transparency and secrecy in European democracies
• Part I The drive to transparency
• Part II Transparency and secrecy: day-to-day trade-offs
• Part III Oversight and accountability
• Index