Unpacking the Transparency-Secrecy Nexus: Frontstage and backstage behaviour in a political party

Abstract

While the majority of research promotes the idea of transparency and puts all efforts into refining existing concepts, critical studies emphasize the performativity of measures to increase visibility. The article theorizes the nexus of transparency and secrecy by drawing on Erving Goffman’s frontstage/backstage theory, according to which actors vie to maintain boundaries of visibility by alternating these two types of situations. Using this approach, the article interprets the emergence of new forms of secrecy in reaction to transparency measures as efforts to maintain or create boundaries of visibility between front- and backstage. This perspective is empirically applied to a study on parliamentarian representatives of the Pirate Party of Germany, a political party that tries to be as transparent as possible and vows to live up to this ambition when elected. The study demonstrates that an organization which deprives itself of boundaries of visibility between frontstage and backstage faces obstacles which lead it to eventually introduce such boundaries. This study, therefore, offers an in-depth examination of the limitations of transparency and its unintended consequences.