Transparency as a political device

Introduction In his 1896 essay on ‘The Secret and the Secret Society’, Georg Simmel noted the progressive openness of the state or, as he expressed it, “publicity’s invasion of the affairs of state”. This invasion had occurred to “such an extent that, by now, governments officially publish facts without whose secrecy, prior to the nineteenth century, no regime seemed possible” (Simmel, 1950: 336). Today, the question of the openness of the state has been framed in a particular way; for many t..