Transparency: From Enlightenment to Neoliberalism or When a Norm of Liberation Becomes a Tool of Governing

Afshin Mehrpouya and Marie-Laure Salles-Djelic ()
Additional contact information
Afshin Mehrpouya: GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Marie-Laure Salles-Djelic: CSO - Centre de sociologie des organisations (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Transparency is one of the fundamental norms that structure our contemporary individual, organizational and social lives. Its influence can be felt at all levels, and it provides, in particular, the normative foundation for the current explosion of accounting, audit and other visibility-based accountability structures. The emergence and rapid expansion of international organizations – that have played a central role in structuring transnational governance around a plethora of standards and audits – has been fundamental to the theorization and global diffusion of accountability regimes. In this paper, we undertake a conceptual genealogy of the powerful notion of transparency. Starting with its Enlightenment roots, we explore the multiple competing and conflicting mobilizations of the notion of transparency through time to liberate, to deliberate, to legitimize, to control, to structure or to govern. We then trace the transposition of these various historical trajectories into the transnational space. Beginning with the League of Nations, we follow the various mutations of transnational transparency up to its contemporary and profound neoliberal transformation. We show how transnational transparency has shifted from being a norm of emancipatory accountability, "exposing the few to the many", to one of governing by "exposing the many to the few".

Keywords: transparency; transnational governance; accountability; genealogy; enlightenment; visibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09-23
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02018562

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().