The Ideological Drift of “Transparency”

Sunlight is a great disinfectant. But it can also scorch the earth and render it lifeless.

A friend flagged this 2018 Yale Law Journal article by David Pozen entitled “Transparency’s Ideological Drift.” It caught my attention because the obstruction-minded group that will likely be seeking a majority on West Lafayette’s school board in the 2024 election has long used “transparency” as a rallying cry.

Pozen notes that historically transparency and open government have been linked with progressive politics. However, in the twenty-first century, “transparency is doing different work.”

Perhaps the most fundamental driver of this ideological drift, however, is the most easily overlooked: the diminishing marginal returns to government transparency. As public institutions became subject to more and more policies of openness and accountability, demands for transparency became more and more threatening to the functioning and legitimacy of those institutions and, consequently, to progressive political agendas.

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Groups on all sides of the political spectrum swear fealty to it. In its actual application, however, transparency has become increasingly associated with institutional incapacity and with agendas that seek to maximize market freedom and shrink the state—a trend epitomized by the Federalist Society’s launch in 2016 of a Regulatory Transparency Project[.] … The link between open government and active government has become ever more attenuated.

With respect to advisory committees, Pozen notes that open door laws have reduced the use of such committees and, when used, hindered their usefulness. “Where advisory committees are used, ‘[the Federal Advisory Committee Act] has hindered collaborative forms of stakeholder involvement’ as well as the ability to produce timely and useful advice.” At the state level, there is evidence that such requirements chill candor and hamper compromise. “The mid-1970s notion that laws like [Government in the Sunshine Act] would ‘restore the faith of the public in their governmental agencies and . . . enable such agencies to function in a more equitable fashion’ now seems hopelessly naïve, if not exactly backwards.”

When trying to grapple with why transparency has drifted from a progressive ideal to one put to use eroding the ability of our institutions to function, Pozen notes that transparency is abstract and, therefore, likely to be put to different uses by different groups. As one of our local teachers pointed out in a school board meeting where the opposition group campaigned under the banner of transparency, it is a “glittering generality.” (“An emotionally appealing phrase so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that it carries conviction without supporting information or reason. Such highly valued concepts attract general approval and acclaim. Their appeal is to emotions such as love of country and home, and desire for peace, freedom, glory, and honor. They ask for approval without examination of the reason. They are typically used in propaganda posters/advertisements and used by propagandists and politicians.”)

Popular distrust fuels demand for “evidence” of agency activities, as transparency itself “becomes a symbol of organizational [honesty] and health.” And yet, distrust also creates an environment in which skeptical interpretations of such evidence can flourish, which in turn fuels demand for additional disclosures. No happy equilibrium is ever reached. Without an affirmative political program to guide information policy, as in the Progressive Era, transparency mandates never seem to generate a widely shared sense of security or empowerment regarding the institutions that are “opened up.” They end up generating, instead, calls for ever more transparency.

Perhaps I will dig into this article further in the future. Certainly it was not directed toward our little school board. But it’s disturbingly accurate in how it predicted dynamics we’ve seen in our community. A group with no discernible substantive agenda has worked to sow distrust in our school administration and school board under the banner of transparency. Whatever the ultimate goal might be — assuming anything other than distrust in our institutions is desired – it is almost certainly nothing progressive.