A Policymaking Process “Tug-of-War”: National Information Security Policies in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is tension between the ideal of government transparency and the need to protect vital information. What types of information do governments protect on national security grounds? What arguments do governments use to justify the protection of this information? What will influence an open government information policy as opposed to a closed information policy? Through an examination of more than 250 information security–related policies from around the world, it is clear that (a) all governments limit the flows of information, (b) there are different reasons for this, and (c) the reasons are not always correlated to government type. In other words, sometimes democracies and authoritarian countries limit the same types of information issues. The policies and policy discussions are dependent on a variety of actors and which actor(s) wield the strongest influence at the time, which makes them often get caught up in a policy “tug-of-war” that most often results in incremental policy change and implementation.