Transparency

Transparency is commonly understood as openness and the “opposite of secrecy” (Florini 1998), to be secured through greater availability and increased flows of information. In our globalizing era, transparency seems to be implicated in every controversy of the moment, from the 2010 WikiLeaks disclosure of United States' diplomatic cables, to the 2009 Copenhagen climate meeting's battles over “monitoring, reporting and verification” of greenhouse gas emissions and the 2008 global financial crisis with its attendant lack of disclosure about questionable business transactions. Transparency is thus linked to the most politically charged debates of our times, those relating to due process and good governance, human security and oversight of markets in an era of globalization.