(In)visible European Government: Critical Approaches to Transparency as an Ideal and a Practice offers a fresh and comprehensive approach to the theoretical premises and practical applications of the concept of transparency, both in the specific context of the European Union (EU) and in the wider context of global governance. While much has been written on transparency of institutions, this volume offers a novel perspective by avoiding the general trend of embracing transparency as an ‘unquestionable virtue’ in modern society and, instead, seeking to comprehend the foundations behind the current ‘age of transparency’ (7). To achieve its ambitious goal, the volume brings together a broad set of interdisciplinary contributions from legal, political science, critical, cultural, public administration and media studies scholars that look at the social embeddings of the concept of transparency, discussing the representations of transparency in social imaginaries, the ideologies behind transparency regimes and the normative agendas behind research on transparency.
The diversity of themes and approaches creates a challenge to the unity of the volume and the reader finds themself navigating between empirically oriented chapters that assess the application of national and European legislation on access to documents (notably, Regulation 1049/2001) and philosophical approaches to the role of transparency in present-day democracies. Nonetheless, all contributions are effectively bound together by a common critical agenda towards the government transparency debate, which is clearly set out in the introduction by Hillebrandt, Leino-Sandberg and Koivisto. Collectively, the different authors address some of the difficult questions in the debate, such as whether transparency policies are really neutral (they are not, Leino-Sandberg argues, as they determine what becomes visible and, in turn, what remains invisible) and what interests they pursue (depending on their design and implementation, Birchall warns, they can serve the goal of furthering social justice or support existing politico-economic settlements and inequalities); whether citizens are closer to the truth by having transparency policies (not necessarily, Koivisto argues, as these policies are biased towards showing government in the ‘socially best possible light’; 108); and whether more transparency leads to more legitimate government (not always, as citizens’ trust in institutions must accommodate a level of government secrecy, and unwanted exposure through leaked information can actually lead to decreasing confidence in representative government, as demonstrated by Koivisto and Mokrosinska).
The volume is organized into three parts. Part I (Chapters 2 to 5) focuses on questions related to research methodology, discussing the need for conscious and innovative methodological choices when studying a subject as intangible as transparency, and positioning the volume within the context of participatory action research (Leino-Sandberg). These contributions provide examples from the use of documents submitted to EU courts as a way to examine Member States’ transparency preferences (Leppävirta), or the use of access to document requests as a way to uncover secretive governance practices, even when documents are not disclosed (Sormunen and Gnes), and propose an interpretative research agenda in transparency studies (Heide and Wickberg).
Part II (Chapters 6 to 10) focuses on theoretical approaches to transparency, taking a critical stance towards transparency as the ultimate ideal and placing it in the context of broader societal discussions on democracy, neutrality, authenticity and legitimacy. The different contributions argue that transparency follows a performative operational logic in an attempt to appear in a certain way to the public (Koivisto), that it can support or undermine political agendas and can be deployed to serve selected goals (Birchall), that transparency goes hand in hand with a hunger for immediacy and terror of the authentic in our societies (Alloa) and that the normative arguments for transparency actually support a level of secrecy in government (Mokrosinska). A concrete example of the relations between transparency, evidence and accountability is offered in relation to algorithmic governance by Ingrams.
Part III (Chapters 11 to 16) deals with the empirical analysis of how transparency works in the EU. The contributions shed light on the problems and conflicts that emerge in the everyday application of transparency policies in the EU, such as the risk that broad disclosure of documents deters actors from maintaining comprehensive written archives (Novak), the insufficient quality, accessibility and actionability of information made available through transparency policies (Hoppe, on trilogue-proceedings; Fink and Hillebrandt, on the functioning of Frontex; Brandsma, on corporate sponsors to Council Presidencies), the fragmentation of transparency rules across EU agencies (Korkea-aho, on the regulation of lobbying activities) and the difficulties of moderating online content in light of the asymmetric power of digital media platforms (Maroni).
Overall, this volume makes an important contribution to ongoing debates on government transparency in our democracies, taking into account the new challenges brought about by an age of expanding technologies and growing suspicion towards representative politics. It sets out a research agenda that is critical of ‘transparency complacency’ (Curtin, Epilogue) and invites the reader to question an unnuanced approach to transparency and its relationship with concepts such as legitimacy, efficiency and accountability of institutions. The focus on European governance in the title of the volume should not discourage lawyers and scientists from other fields from picking it up. The points raised in the different chapters go well beyond the boundaries of EU scholarship and touch upon questions that will be of interest to public lawyers, political scientists and scholars of governance and democracy, both for their activities as researchers and as engaged citizens. These range from the discussions on the impact of researchers’ normative agendas on the selection of research topics and methods (forcing scholars to contemplate their own relationship with their research subjects), to theoretical considerations on the value of transparency and empirical analysis of the gap between legislative aspirations and the reality of the daily application of transparency policies (drawing from examples of EU governance, but also national transparency policies within Europe and the United States).
