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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DEMSEC (Democratic Secrecy: A Philosophical Study of the Role of Secrecy in Democratic Politics)

Teaser

Summary

The main theoretical objective of the project is to develop a new theory of the democratic legitimacy of secrecy in governance, that is, to demonstrate that secrecy in exercising (1) executive and (2) legislative power can be democratically authorized. To complement the theory, the project aims to design (3) the criteria for political accountability for exercising political secrecy and the criteria for assessing responsibility for unauthorized disclosures of classified information by civil servants and the media. The results of this philosophical study set a new course in democratic theory by demonstrating that democratic governance requires less openness than traditionally assumed. These results have also practical relevance: Understanding when and why secrecy is morally acceptable may change the policy approach to transparency provisions, and provide a better fit between the â€œpublic\'s right to knowâ€ and the needs of government. Besides the theoretical objectives, the project aims to provide (4) an empirical study of the practice of trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in governance in European democracies.

Work performed

Against the prevailing view that state secrecy is, at best, a justified suspension of democratic governance, the project has demonstrated that, under certain conditions, secrecy in exercising executive power is a legitimate form of democratic governance, not merely a justifiable suspension of it. The main pillar of the new theory is the argument linking executive secrecy to the concept of political authority that democratic governments exercise. This theory democratic secrecy has moved beyond the prevailing defenses of secrecy in terms of necessity and raison dâ€™etat. By linking the justification of secrecy to the concept of political authority, the new theory has also overcome the fragmented character of the existing discourse that defends secrecy in isolated contexts (such as military matters or economic policy) and developed a synthesizing approach instead.

Defending secrecy in democratic governance raises a question regarding the constraints on the secret uses of political power. The project has proposed an account of the political value of privacy that is among constraints on state secrecy.

The theory of democratic secrecy has been employed to analyze the philosophical foundations of the Freedom of Information legislation (FOIA) viz. the â€œpublic\'s right to knowâ€ and to provide a normative defense of the exemptions from the FOIA.

With regard to the problem of unauthorized disclosures, the project has clarified the wrongness of whistleblowing (the whistleblowers arrogate the power to decide what is and what is not a legitimate state secret, which properly belongs to elected officials; they also violate promissory obligations and role obligations). The project has rebutted the most common defense of whistleblowing in terms of the individual right to freedom of expression. Instead, it states that whistleblowing is justified if three conditions are met: (1) the information disclosed must concern grave government wrongdoing that is of public interest; (2) alternatives to public disclosure must first have been exhausted; and (3) the harmful consequences of disclosure must be minimized. By way of illustrating the practical application of the public interest defense of whistleblowing, the project addressed the cases of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Finally, whereas the existing discussion on whistleblowing presents blowing the whistle as a right, the project has developed a novel approach arguing that blowing the whistle may be a duty.

An interdisciplinary and evaluative study of the practice of secrecy in governance in European democracies has been conducted. The planned output of this part of the project is an edited collection of essays, tentatively entitled â€œThe Contested Trade-offs: Secrecy and Transparency in European Democracies.â€ The volume has three distinctive features. First, it focuses on the political practice of secrecy in modern European democracies and thereby broadens and supplements the existing literature, which has hitherto focused mainly on the US and the UK. Second, the proposed collection gives central place to the political practice of trade-offs between secrecy and transparency. The choice of topics (refusals of FOIA requests, secrecy in the organizational culture of intelligence services, diplomatic secrecy, secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, leaks of classified information from the Romanian intelligence service, classified material used as evidence in court proceedings) has been made with this focus in mind. Third, the volume is interdisciplinary in character. The contributing authors represent a variety of disciplines: law, sociology, the political sciences, political philosophy, public administration, intelligence studies and history.

Final results

Having developed an account of the democratic legitimacy of executive secrecy, the project will address two related issues.

First, the project will examine the issue of democratic oversight of executive secrecy. This study will involve, on the one hand, a critical discussion of the existing mechanisms of control and accountability and, on the other hand, it will use an empirical case study to analyze the negotiation of secrecy rules in the parliament. The latter part of this study will be based on interviews with MPs and an analysis of parliamentary debate.

Second, the project will address the use of secrecy in the legislative process. The hypothesis is that a degree of secrecy in legislative process is justified in that it facilitates the decision-making processes. First, secrecy enables legislators to take the initiative. Second, secrecy facilitates compromise. Third, secrecy may expose legislative â€œcaptureâ€ (in the legislative context secret voting may serve to reveal legislatorsâ€™ true preferences. When paired sequentially with open voting, it may then shed light on the distorting influence of lobbyists, campaign donors, and interest groups). In keeping with the DoA, it will be argued that accountability does not require a fully transparent legislative process. Contrary to conventional wisdom, accountability and transparency are not the sorts of goods we can simply maximize. Rather, we always need to tailor them by providing some substantive account of the basis on which the agent (lawmaker) is properly accountable to her principal (citizens). It will be argued that legislators are properly assessed on the basis of their formal proposals, statements on the record, and binding votes. So long as these contributions are publicly accessible, secrecy cannot be regarded as rendering legislators unaccountable.

Regarding the problem of unauthorized disclosures, the project will develop an account of the responsibility of the media for unauthorized disclosures. Philosophical discussions have focused mainly on the political and legal answerability of the leakers, with a special focus on civil servants. The answerability of the press has not yet been addressed. The project aims at filling that gap.