Brookings – Why Critics of Transparency Are Wrong, By Gary D. Bass, Danielle Brian and Norman Eisen.

“A number of commentators and academics have recently made the attention-grabbing assertion that excessive openness and transparency are one of the causes of our country’s governance woes. For example, The Atlantic’s David Frum claims that transparency and accountability reforms in government “have weakened political authority…[and] yielded more lobbying, more expense, more delay, and more indecision.” The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Jason Grumet urges that “it’s time to revisit…the reforms inspired by the mistrust of government that Watergate helped engender…aimed at transparency, openness and the monitoring of decision making.” Jonathan Rauch, a Senior Fellow at Brookings, advocates in favor of a return to “honest graft,” including reversing transparency rules to make government work better. Noted academic Francis Fukuyama, decrying the current dysfunction of our democratic processes, concludes that, “The obvious solution to this problem would be to roll back some of the would-be democratizing reforms, but no one dares suggest that what the country needs is a bit less participation and transparency…In this paper, we respond to the principal myths about transparency that are cropping up in books, academic journals and newspapers across the country, and demonstrate the enduring value of open government. In fact, transparency is actually one of the areas today where Congress can find common ground to help make government work better. To be clear, we are not transparency absolutists. We believe that transparency should be balanced with the appropriate secrecy that government needs to function — but as we demonstrate below, that balance is already being struck. When one looks beyond the rhetoric at the actual facts of government operations, there is already more than enough of the secrecy the critics call for. If anything, the balance tips too far in that direction, and more transparency is needed, not less.”

• See also via Brookings – The Limits of Legislative Transparency