Whistleblowing and Collective Action: How Civil Society Organizations Intervene in the Process of Information Disclosure

Whereas the literature on corruption and organizations has greatly contributed to the understanding of whistleblowing emergence, characteristics and effects, collective action studies have remained quite silent on the topic. This gap seems to be particularly problematic given the increasing contribution of social movements, investigative journalism, and civil society organizations in collecting, articulating, and publicizing the information disclosed by whistleblowers. Whereas civil society organizations and social movements can represent privileged targets for individuals disclosing information, their role as whistleblowers’ addresses has seldom been investigated. In particular, a lot has still to be said on how collective action influences whistleblowing, setting in motion processes of political and social change that ease information disclosure and strengthen its consequences. Focusing on the Spanish and Italian trajectories, the article builds on the analysis of interview materials, documents, newspaper articles, and parliamentary debates through a qualitative network analysis approach. The analysis singles out the ways in which grassroots actors intervene in the process of whistleblowing. In particular, the article maintains that collective actors intervene in the whistleblowing process through three strategies: policy input, legal path, and intermediation. Elucidating these strategies, the article discusses their consequence on policy-making and beyond, concluding that civil society organizations do play a role in the process of whistleblowing. Interventions at the policy level can significantly improve the safety of informants, the use of legal means can ease the obtainment of formal and informal sanctions, as well as mediating the relationship between whistleblowers and the institutional and media realms can result in relevant changes in the public opinion as well as in the administrative sector. The comparison between the Italian and Spanish cases sheds light on the role of contextual opportunities in orienting actors’ strategic preferences as well as in mediating their consequences. All in all, the article claims that the interaction between whistleblowing and collective action can have important consequences in terms of social accountability. The intersection of these two forms of ethical resistance is certainly worthy of a deeper investigation.