TRANSPARENCY IN TRANSNATIONAL GOVERNANCEExploring the genealogy of a powerful norm

Abstract

Transparency has its roots in the Enlightenment, deemed a key precondition for emergence of the self-governing and liberal individual. During the past forty years, simultaneous with the global neoliberal push, transparency has fast emerged as a world society norm of information disclosure for public accountability and for functioning of the markets. In this paper, we show the institutional context under which transparency emerged as a world society norm in the 20th century. This study first provides an overview of the different paths that the democratic and market based information demands have taken from enlightenment to early 20th century. Through a study of the transnational emergence of transparency, it then shows how transnational organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the OECD, brought together marketization and democratization under their broader neoliberal political agenda. It is in this context that the term transparency started to represent a wide range of information demands based on democratic and market-based arguments for both state and non-state organizations that were formerly referred to as “publicity principle”, “right to information”, openness and disclosure and this resulted in the birth of this dominant and highly performative world society norm.