Description
Book SynopsisTroubling 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, especially the mixed legacy and effectiveness of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Trade ReviewIs transparency part of the solution or part of the problem of modern democracy? Bringing together some of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of transparency law, this volume reassesses where we stand fifty years after enactment of the Freedom of Information Act. Its essays offer critical reflections, affirmative fixes, and comparative evaluations, ultimately shedding invaluable light on the romantic notion that sunlight is the best disinfectant. -- David Cole, National Legal Director, ACLU, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center
A breakthrough volume, which stops treating transparency as an obvious good and looks carefully at its costs as well as its benefits. These are the careful studies we’ve been waiting for. -- Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University
An essential intervention that collects the best thinking on the complex relationship between transparency and democracy. -- Tim Wu, Columbia University
Troubling Transparency comprises the most important contemporary scholarship on FOIA and its place in the ecosystem of government transparency. Each chapter provides a fresh, often bracing perspective on FOIA’s foundations, its functions, and whether it is serving the lofty democratic and good-government objectives that it was meant to advance. Essential reading for any scholar of government secrecy or accountability. -- Jonathan Manes, University at Buffalo
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Troubling Transparency, by David E. Pozen and Michael Schudson
Part I: FOIA’s Historical and Conceptual Foundations1. How Administrative Opposition Shaped the Freedom of Information Act, by Sam Lebovic
2. Positive Rights, Negative Rights, and the Right to Know, by Frederick Schauer
3. FOIA as an Administrative Law, by Mark Fenster
Part II: FOIA and the News Media4. The Other FOIA Requesters, by Margaret B. Kwoka
5. State FOI Laws: More Journalist-Friendly, or Less?, by Katherine Fink
6. FOIA and Investigative Reporting: Who’s Asking What, Where, and When—and Why It Matters, by James T. Hamilton
Part III: Theorizing Transparency Tactics7. The Ecology of Transparency Reloaded, by Seth F. Kreimer
8. Monitoring the U.S. Executive Branch Inside and Out: The Freedom of Information Act, Inspectors General, and the Paradoxes of Transparency, by Nadia Hilliard
9. Output Transparency vs. Input Transparency, by Cass R. Sunstein
10. Open Data: The Future of Transparency in the Age of Big Data, by Beth Simone Noveck
11. Striking the Right Balance: Weighing the Public Interest in Access to Agency Records Under the Freedom of Information Act, by Katie Townsend and Adam A. Marshall
Part IV: Comparative Perspectives12. The Global Influence of the United States on Freedom of Information, by Kyu Ho Youm and Toby Mendel
13. Transparency as Leverage or Transparency as Monitoring? U.S. and Nordic Paradigms in Latin America, by Gregory Michener
14. Structural Corruption and the Democratic-Expansive Model of Transparency in Mexico, by Irma Eréndira Sandoval-Ballesteros
List of Contributors
Index
