THE TRANSPARENCY FIX: ADVOCATING LEGAL RIGHTS AND THEIR ALTERNATIVES IN THE PURSUIT OF A VISIBLE STATE

Mark Fenster
2012 University of Pittsburgh law review  
The administrative norm of transparency, which promises a solution to the problem of government secrecy, requires political advocacy organized from outside the state. The traditional approach, typically the result of organized campaigns to make the state visible to the public, has been to enact freedom of information laws (FOI) that require government disclosure and grant enforceable rights to the public. The legal solution has not proven wholly satisfactory, however. In the past two decades,
more » ... merous advocacy movements have offered different fixes to the information asymmetry problem that the administrative state creates. These alternatives now augment and sometimes compete with legal transparency regimes. This article surveys and analyzes transparency advocacy campaigns and the "fix" that each proposes to the problems created by the state's asymmetrical information advantage over the public. It sketches the history of four campaigns: the FOI movement in the United States, the global anti-corruption movement (spearheaded by Transparency International), the digital-transparency movement, and the advent of WikiLeaks.
doi:10.5195/lawreview.2012.225 fatcat:glcqwflet5fevnuntatnzt7k3i