Secrecy and Transparency

Democratic decision-making as well as democratic control require knowledge and basic insights into political processes and outcomes. Thus, conceptions of democracy include transparency as a necessary precondition. Nevertheless, there are spheres of secrecy within democracies. State security, executive privilege and privacy are forceful motives used by political actors to legitimize secrecy. These spheres of secrecy, it is argued here, are more than just aberrations from transparency. They have their own function in the political process, as transparency rules do. Therefore, we cannot understand the two as being their respective opposite, but as different political instruments. The paper focuses on the relationship between democracy, transparency and secrecy. It retraces changes in the theoretical understanding of this relationship and the varying value attached to secrecy and transparency from a historical perspective. Furthermore, it discusses their different and specific functions as well as possible ambiguities and conflicts in their interaction.