Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency

Archon Fung; Mary Graham; David Weil

doi:10.1017/9780521699617

Governments employ public disclosure strategies to reduce risks, improve public and private goods and services, and reduce injustice. In the United States, these targeted transparency policies include financial securities disclosures, nutritional labels, school report cards, automobile rollover rankings, and sexual offender registries. They constitute a light-handed approach to governance that empowers citizens. However, these policies are frequently ineffective or counterproductive. Based on a comparative analysis of eighteen major policies, the authors suggest that transparency policies often produce information that is incomplete, incomprehensible, or irrelevant to the consumers, investors, workers, and community residents who could benefit from them. Sometimes transparency fails because those who are threatened by it form political coalitions to limit or distort information. To be successful, transparency policies must place the needs of ordinary citizens at centre stage and produce information that informs their everyday choices. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

'This rich, carefully researched, well balanced, and readily accessible study shows us that good governance, with legislators at the local, state or national levels in the lead, is surely difficult but far from unattainable. This hard nosed scholarship demonstrating, as the authors themselves discovered, that pragmatism about both policy expectations and policy results should prevail among political leaders and citizens alike.'

Source: Perspectives on Politics

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv
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Frontmatter
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Dediaction
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Contents
pp vii-ix
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List of Figures and Tables
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Contents
pp vii-ix
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Preface
pp xi-xviii
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List of Figures and Tables
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Preface
pp xi-xviii
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1 - Governance by Transparency
pp 1-18
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1 - Governance by Transparency
pp 1-18
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2 - An Unlikely Policy Innovation
pp 19-34
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2 - An Unlikely Policy Innovation
pp 19-34
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3 - Designing Transparency Policies
pp 35-49
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3 - Designing Transparency Policies
pp 35-49
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4 - What Makes Transparency Work?
pp 50-105
(With Elena Fagotto)
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4 - What Makes Transparency Work?
pp 36-105
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5 - What Makes Transparency Sustainable?
pp 106-126
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5 - What Makes Transparency Sustainable?
pp 106-126
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6 - International Transparency
pp 127-150
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7 - Toward Collaborative Transparency
pp 151-169
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6 - International Transparency
pp 107-150
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7 - Toward Collaborative Transparency
pp 151-169
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8 - Targeted Transparency in the Information Age
pp 170-182
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Appendix: Eighteen Major Cases
pp 183-216
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8 - Targeted Transparency in the Information Age
pp 170-182
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Appendix: EighteenMajor Cases
pp 183-216
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Notes
pp 217-256
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Bibliography
pp 257-274
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Notes
pp 217-256
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The Perils and Promise of Transparency

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