OPEN GOVERNMENT AND THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE IN THE UNITED STATES
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12269 |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | PHILIP ROCCO |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12269
BOOK REVIEW ESSAY
OPEN GOVERNMENT AND THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC
KNOWLEDGE IN THE UNITED STATES
PHILIP ROCCO
Secrecy in the Sunshine Era: The Promise and Failure of US Open Government
Laws Jason Ross Arnold
University Press of Kansas, 2014, 566 pp., $28.07, ISBN: 0700619925
Legislating in the Dark: Information and Power in the House of Representatives
James M. Curry
University of Chicago Press, 2015, 264 pp., $30.00, ISBN: 9780226281711
Watchdogson the Hill: The Decline of Congressional Oversight of US Foreign Relations
Linda L. Fowler
Princeton University Press, 2015, 280 pp., $17.97, ISBN: 9780691151625
The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945–1975
Michael Schudson
Belknap Press, 2015, 368 pp., $29.95, ISBN: 9780674744059
INTRODUCTION
Since his inauguration in 2009, President Barack Obama has emphasized his administra-
tion’s commitment to improving public knowledge about what government does. On his
rst day in ofce, Obama signed a ‘Memorandum on Transparency and Open Govern-
ment’, which set the course for a series of executive orders requiring federal agencies
to make ‘open and machine readable data’ a default policy. These efforts culminated in
data.gov, an online repository for government-collected information (Obama 2009).
Policy ideas like transparency and openness have long been identied with the goal
of holding democratic governments (and sometimes the private sector) responsible (Shils
1956; Rourke 1961). Yet beyond mere accountability, Obama’s rhetoric suggests that data
and transparency can be positive instruments of public policy – a means of shaping social
and economic behaviour that differs qualitatively from scal incentives or regulatory pun-
ishments. As the 2013 Executive Order puts it, ‘making information resources easy to nd,
accessible, and usable can fuel entrepreneurship, innovation, and scientic discovery that
improves Americans’ lives and contributes signicantly to job creation’ (Obama 2013).
Philip Rocco is at the Department of Political Science, Marquette University,USA
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 3, 2016 (846–853)
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
To continue reading
Request your trial