Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2019
Abstract
In recent years, transparency has been proposed as the solution to, and the cause of, a remarkable range of public problems. The proliferation of seemingly contradictory claims about transparency becomes less puzzling, this essay argues, when one appreciates that transparency is not, in itself, a coherent normative ideal. Nor does it have a straightforward instrumental relationship to any primary goals of governance. To gain greater purchase on how transparency policies operate, scholars must therefore move beyond abstract assumptions and drill down into the specific legal, institutional, historical, political, and cultural contexts in which these policies are crafted and implemented. The field of transparency studies, in other words, is due for a "sociological turn."
Disciplines
Administrative Law | First Amendment | Law | Law and Politics | Public Law and Legal Theory
Recommended Citation
David E. Pozen,
Seeing Transparency More Clearly,
Public Administrative Review, Vol. 80, p. 326, 2020; Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-643
(2019).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2578
Included in
Administrative Law Commons, First Amendment Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons