Chapter 7: Radical Transparency, Proto-Institutional Government, and Post-foundational Politics

Disclosure pushes democracies to the heart of the matter: what to make visible and what to keep hidden determine what is to be done and how to do so. Yet, the practices of who collect what about whom can shift rapidly and radically, uprooting expectations of medium, position, and politics. Printing the secrets of parliament in the City, distributing international treaties across the wire, or public diplomacy itself, all radically challenged the expectations of democratic conduct. These radical actions changed what transparency meant, how it was enacted, and what it did to governors and citizens alike. These acts of radical transparency are exemplars of new expectations put to the conduct of conduct. Radical actions in the digital era have not yet as clearly turned a tide of democratic norms. WikiLeaks limps along, infiltrated by state actors. Hacker-based transparency still registers as undemocratic. Nevertheless, the efficacy and sustainability of actors like the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), experiments like OurSay, and the capacities considered during the Icelandic Council show that radical transparency continues to have a place in shaping democracy's evolution. Evolution is messy. It does not offer a finished end point or a single direction for transparency or democratic practice. Instead, evolution offers branching rhizomic pluralities of practice, some of which die out, some of which grow thick. To mix metaphors, the vigorous plurality seen in natural environments are also manifested as the refracted light of transparency that calls out political colour in the various mediated designs that let the light through. This plurality is not just technocratic – more data do not suggest more of any specific type of politics. Radical democratic pluralism erupts when expectations of openness break down secrets to form new potentials for governmental technologies and rationalities.