Download or read book Transparency and Secrecy in European Democracies written by Dorota Mokrosinska and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-11 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume offers a critical discussion of the trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in the actual political practice of democratic states in Europe. As such, it answers to a growing need to systematically analyse the problem of secrecy in governance in this political and geographical context. Focusing on topical cases and controversies in particular areas, the contributors reflect on the justification and limits of the use of secrecy in democratic governance, register the social, cultural, and historical factors that inform this process and explore the criteria used by European legislators and policy-makers, both at the national and supranational level, when balancing interests on the sides of transparency and secrecy, respectively. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of security studies, political science, European politics/studies, law, history, political philosophy, public administration, intelligence studies, media and communication studies, and information technology sciences.
Download or read book Transparency and Secrecy in European Democracies written by Dorota Mokrosinska and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This edited volume offers a critical discussion of the trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in the actual political practice of democratic states in Europe. As such, it answers to a growing need to systematically analyse the problem of secrecy in governance in this political and geographical context. Focusing on topical cases and controversies in particular areas, the contributors reflect on the justification and limits of the use of secrecy in democratic governance, register the social, cultural, and historical factors that inform this process and explore the criteria used by European legislators and policy-makers, both at the national and supranational level, when balancing interests on the sides of transparency and secrecy respectively. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of security studies, political science, European politics/studies, law, history, political philosophy, public administration, intelligence studies, media and communication studies, and information technology sciences"--
Download or read book The Right to Know written by Ann Florini and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Right to Know is a timely and compelling consideration of a vital question: What information should governments and other powerful organizations disclose? Excessive secrecy corrodes democracy, facilitates corruption, and undermines good public policymaking, but keeping a lid on military strategies, personal data, and trade secrets is crucial to the protection of the public interest. Over the past several years, transparency has swept the world. India and South Africa have adopted groundbreaking national freedom of information laws. China is on the verge of promulgating new openness regulations that build on the successful experiments of such major municipalities as Shanghai. From Asia to Africa to Europe to Latin America, countries are struggling to overcome entrenched secrecy and establish effective disclosure policies. More than seventy now have or are developing major disclosure policies or laws. But most of the world's nearly 200 nations do not have coherent disclosure laws; implementation of existing rules often proves difficult; and there is no consensus about what disclosure standards should apply to the increasingly powerful private sector. As governments and corporations battle with citizens and one another over the growing demand to submit their secrets to public scrutiny, they need new insights into whether, how, and when greater openness can serve the public interest, and how to bring about beneficial forms of greater disclosure. The Right to Know distills the lessons of many nations' often bitter experience and provides careful analysis of transparency's impact on governance, business regulation, environmental protection, and national security. Its powerful lessons make it a critical companion for policymakers, executives, and activists, as well as students and scholars seeking a better understanding of how to make information policy serve the public interest.
Download or read book State Secrecy and Democracy written by Dorota Mokrosinska and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of controversial disclosures of classified government information by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, questions about the democratic status of secret uses of political power are rarely far from the headlines. Despite an increase in initiatives aimed at enhancing government transparency – such as freedom of information or sunshine laws – secrecy persists in both the foreign and domestic policy of democratic states, in the form of classified intelligence programs, espionage, secret military operations, diplomatic discretion, closed-door political bargaining, and bureaucratic opacity. This book explores whether the state’s claim to restrict access to information can be justified. Dorota Mokrosinska answers this question with a qualified "yes," arguing that secrecy in exercising executive and legislative power can be seen as a legitimate exercise of democratic authority rather than as its justified suspension. Past and recent examples of state secrecy are used throughout the book, including the Manhattan Project, decision-making leading to the Iraq War, the extraordinary renditions programs and secret detention sites in Eastern Europe, collaboration between international secret services, and the WikiLeaks and Snowden disclosures. State Secrecy and Democracy: A Philosophical Inquiry is essential reading for those in political philosophy, ethics, politics, international relations and security studies, and law.
Download or read book In visible European Government written by Maarten Hillebrandt and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book questions the theoretical premises and practical applications of transparency, showing both the promises and perils of transparency in a methodologically innovative way and in a cross-section of policy instruments. It scrutinizes transparency from three perspectives - methodologically, theoretically, and empirically - both in the specific context of the EU but also in the wider context of modern society in which transparency is embraced as an almost unquestionable virtue. This book examines the ways in which transparency practices can make institutions visible and stands out for its methodological self-reflection: to fully understand the irresistible call for transparency in our governing institutions, we must reflect on our own relationship with it. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of transparency studies, democratic legitimacy, global governance, governance law, EU studies and law and public policy more widely.
Download or read book Social Media and Democracy written by Nathaniel Persily and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.
Download or read book Troubling Transparency written by David E. Pozen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, transparency is a widely heralded value, and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is often held up as one of the transparency movement’s canonical achievements. Yet while many view the law as a powerful tool for journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens to pursue the public good, FOIA is beset by massive backlogs, and corporations and the powerful have become adept at using it for their own interests. Close observers of laws like FOIA have begun to question whether these laws interfere with good governance, display a deleterious anti-public-sector bias, or are otherwise inadequate for the twenty-first century’s challenges. Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad—how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved. Contributors investigate the creation of FOIA; its day-to-day uses and limitations for the news media and for corporate and citizen requesters; its impact on government agencies; its global influence; recent alternatives to the FOIA model raised by the emergence of “open data” and other approaches to transparency; and the theoretical underpinnings of FOIA and the right to know. In addition to examining the mixed legacy and effectiveness of FOIA, contributors debate how best to move forward to improve access to information and government functioning. Neither romanticizing FOIA nor downplaying its real and symbolic achievements, Troubling Transparency is a timely and comprehensive consideration of laws such as FOIA and the larger project of open government, with wide-ranging lessons for journalism, law, government, and civil society.
Download or read book Transparency in International Law written by Andrea Bianchi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While its importance in domestic law has long been acknowledged, transparency has until now remained largely unexplored in international law. This study of transparency issues in key areas such as international economic law, environmental law, human rights law and humanitarian law brings together new and important insights on this pressing issue. Contributors explore the framing and content of transparency in their respective fields with regard to proceedings, institutions, law-making processes and legal culture, and a selection of cross-cutting essays completes the study by examining transparency in international law-making and adjudication.
Download or read book European Yearbook of Constitutional Law 2021 written by Jurgen de Poorter and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-06 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Yearbook of Constitutional Law (EYCL) is an annual publication devoted to the study of constitutional law. It aims to provide a forum for in-depth analysis and discussion of new developments in the field, both in Europe and beyond. This third volume of the EYCL focuses on constitutional advice, an underexplored topic of legal scholarship today, and addresses this situation by looking beyond constitutional law’s familiar focus on the classic separation of powers and the main legislative, executive and judicial bodies implied by this construct. The attention is shifted to mapping and analysing the advisory bodies and functions grouped around and in support of the legislators, administrators and judges at the frontline of the constitutional edifice, which is accomplished through national, comparative and transnational perspectives on constitutional advice from Europe and beyond. Addressing the topic of constitutional advice is necessary to broaden and deepen not only our understanding of advice as a field in its own right, but also as a way of rendering a fuller account of contemporary constitutionalism. Also, the increasing political polarisation across many societies today underscores the need to study constitutional advice on topics of significance in an attempt to bridge divides and end gridlock. This book will be of special interest to constitutional scholars and legal scholars more generally, as well as to political scientists. In addition, government officials, judges and policy-makers wishing to better understand the legal mechanisms and avenues when it comes to rendering or receiving advice in the contemporary constitutional context will find much of relevance. Jurgen de Poorter is professor at Tilburg Law School, Department of Public Law and Governance. Gerhard van der Schyff is associate professor at Tilburg Law School, Department of Public Law and Governance. Maarten Stremler is assistant professor at Maastricht University, Faculty of Law, Department of Public Law. Maartje De Visser is associate professor at Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University, Singapore.
Download or read book Executive Secrecy and Democratic Politics written by Dorothee Riese and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-05-26 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the parliamentary negotiation of executive secrecy. Parliaments depend on information to fulfil their roles as the people’s representatives, legislators and overseers of the executive. However, there are examples of executive secrecy across all policy fields. How, then, do parliamentary actors try to reconcile secrecy and the normative demands of an open, democratic society? This volume analyses parliamentary arguments, conflicts and patterns of agreement around this topic in the case of Germany. Based on two case studies – intelligence agencies secrecy and Public Private Partnership secrecy – it argues that substantive justifications of secrecy focusing on necessity are highly contested. By contrast, procedural legitimation of secrecy, namely deciding about it democratically, is crucial. Still, there are inherent limits to the legitimation of executive secrecy. The book therefore underlines the fragility of secrecy’s legitimation, and its need for constant actualisation.
Download or read book Trust Courts and Social Rights written by David Vitale and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-15 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trust, Courts and Social Rights proposes an innovative legal framework for judicially enforcing social rights that is rooted in public trust in government or 'political trust'. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book draws on theoretical and empirical scholarship on the concept of trust across disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, psychology and political theory. It integrates that scholarship with the relevant public law literature on social rights, fiduciary political theory and judicial review. In doing so, the book uses trust as an analytical lens for social rights law – importing ideas from the scholarship on trust into the social rights literature – and develops a normative argument that contributes to the controversial debate on how courts should enforce social rights. Also global in focus, the book uses cases from courts in Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America to illustrate how the trust-based framework operates in practice.
Download or read book National Security Secrecy written by Sudha Setty and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers how excessive national security secrecy undercuts democracy and the rule of law, necessitating comparative and critical analysis toward potential reforms.
Download or read book Intelligence Practices in High Trust Societies written by Kira Vrist Rønn and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-13 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the dynamics of intelligence practices in the Scandinavian culture of high social cohesion and high trust. Situated within the new body of scholarly literature, the book emphasizes critical empirical investigations of intelligence practices, highlighting the specific cultural settings of such practices. By providing Scandinavian perspectives on intelligence studies, the work distinguishes Scandinavian intelligence studies from the predominant Anglo-American perspectives. Throughout the Western world, the past two decades have generated a rapid expansion of the legal mandate, funding, and capabilities of intelligence agencies which, simultaneously, have been pushed to renegotiate and renew their legitimacy and democratic mandate in response to a recurrent pattern of scandals, leaks, and failures. While these tendencies are also evident in Scandinavia, the book argues that it is important to emphasize the unique context of cohesion and trust in state agencies that differentiates Scandinavian welfare states from the American (and to a lesser extent British) contexts. This book brings together scholars from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark to address the continuous renegotiation of the legitimacy of state intelligence as it plays out in a Scandinavian setting. This book will be of interest to students of intelligence studies, Nordic politics, security studies, and International Relations.
Download or read book Location of Public Services written by Jenny de Fine Licht and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eu Diplomatic Law written by Sanderijn Duquet and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-28 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EU Diplomatic Law provides a thorough analysis of the interactions between the European Union (EU) and international diplomatic and consular law. Over the past six decades, the EU has been granted unique powers that enable it to act prominently on the international plane, thereby developing a worldwide bilateral and multilateral diplomatic network. Much like the States, the EU sends ambassadors to all corners of the world and accredits permanent missions at its Brussels' headquarters. These developments shake the foundations of diplomatic and consular law, as these branches of international law are based on the principles of state sovereignty, non-interference, and reciprocity. Traditional conceptions of international law only allow states to perform diplomatic and consular functions, leaving little room for non-state entities such as the EU. Sanderijn Duquet addresses this fundamental problem by re-visiting the foundations of diplomatic and consular law, as well as analysing EU practice in initiating, conducting, and terminating diplomatic and consular relations. In particular, she focuses on: the scope of EU diplomatic and consular powers, especially in relationship to its member states; its application of the Vienna Conventions and customary international law; the EU's use of creative legal techniques; the diplomatic and consular protection of EU citizens; questions of protocol and precedence; and the legal status of the EU's diplomatic staff and premises abroad. By critically analysing these issues, this book assesses the specific contribution the EU makes to the shaping of diplomatic and consular law.
Download or read book Elgar Encyclopedia of Law and Data Science written by Comandé, Giovanni and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-18 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Encyclopedia brings together jurists, computer scientists, and data analysts to map the emerging field of data science and law for the first time, uncovering the challenges, opportunities, and fault lines that arise as these groups are increasingly thrown together by expanding attempts to regulate and adapt to a data-driven world. It explains the concepts and tools at the crossroads of the many disciplines involved in data science and law, bridging scientific and applied domains. Entries span algorithmic fairness, consent, data protection, ethics, healthcare, machine learning, patents, surveillance, transparency and vulnerability.
Download or read book Transparency in Politics and the Media written by Nigel Bowles and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly governments around the world are experimenting with initiatives in transparency or 'open government'. These involve a variety of measures including the announcement of more user-friendly government websites, greater access to government data, the extension of freedom of information legislation and broader attempts to involve the public in government decision making. However, the role of the media in these initiatives has not hitherto been examined. This volume analyses the challenges and opportunities presented to journalists as they attempt to hold governments accountable in an era of professed transparency. In examining how transparency and open government initiatives have affected the accountability role of the press in the US and the UK, it also explores how policies in these two countries could change in the future to help journalists hold governments more accountable. This volume will be essential reading for all practising journalists, for students of journalism or politics, and for policymakers.
