Reviews
| Date | 01 January 1979 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1979.tb01520.x |
| Published date | 01 January 1979 |
REVIEWS
GOVERNMENT
SECREa
IN
DDMOCKACIES.
Edited
by
ITZHAK
GALNOOR.
THE
literature on government secrecy has gone beyond the first stage of
books on particular countries and comparative articles. This
book,
like
Secrecy
and
Foreign
Policy
(Frank
and Weisband, Oxford University Press,
1974)
and
a
similar collection being edited by Professor Rowat
of
Carleton
University, is composed
of
essays
from,
contributors
in
several countries, tied
together by comparative chapters.
It is
a
useful effort, but not without inherent pitfalls. One of these is
the difficulty
of
arriving at a coherent overall view
in
a
book written by
16
people.
Mr.
Galnoor’s concluding chapter brings the contributions together
fairly well, with charts and diagrams for sorting out countries
as
open,
closed,
or
somewhere in between. But some
of
the writers seem at times
to be writing about rather different topics.
“
Information
”
can be dangerously
broad
as
an organising concept, and some seoticms, such
as
Lowi’s discussion
of cable television, are
a
bit far from the book’s central subject.
All but one of the contributors are politioal scientists, and their theoretical
perspective is
a
useful one
for
lawyen. But the emphasis
of
legal writers on
decided
cases
and specific remedies might have balanced
some
of the broader
asseFtions. For example, Francis Rourke’s statement that exemptions from
compulsory disclosure of information under the
US.
Freedom
of
Informa-
tion Act
“
tend to strengthen patterns and powers
of
secrecy that already
prevail”
(p.
119)
should be weighed against the many
cases
under the Act
in which federal courts have ordered unwilling administrators to release
documents. And Lowi’s argument that there should be established
a
legal
right
for citizens to bring oivil suits against
U.S.
government agencies which exceed
their power to keep information secret
(p. 60)
apparently ignores the fact that
the Frcedom
of
Information
Act,
for
all
its faults, did just that in
1967.
The book unavoidably misses out some significant recent developments in
most countries covered, such as the
1976
amendments to the
U.S.
Act,
efforts for an
opem
government law in this country, and French proposals
for a right of access to personal dossiers. And it does not consider the con-
fidentiality of commercial information that
is
so
important
in
government
regulatory decisions.
Uut, overall,
Mr.
Galnoor and his colleagues have coped well with the
problem of surveying the ways
in
which
10
different countries deal with
a
problem of fundamental importance to democratic government. Not the least
of
the book’s value
is
its analysis of such problems as how
a
diet
of
scandals
can
devalue the quality
of
political debate and induce
a
sense
of
cynical
impotence, haw relevant information can be obscured in
a
flood of trivia, and
how discretionary disclosure of government informamtion, however generous,
can co-opt the press from its adversary role.
Needless to say, areat Britain
is
classed along with France as
a
country in
which the government’s privilege to conceal (abbreviated as
G.P.T.C.)
is
valued more highly than the people’s right to know (P.R.T.K.), and Colin
Seymour-Ure provides
n
useful summary of some reasons why, The book
is a refutation
of
the Franks Committee’s conclusion after looking at other
countries that, whatever the law in the United States and Sweden might
be, government secrecy was pretty much the same in dempcracies. It is not,
and the open government laws of those countries have had at least some
effect on the availability of information there. And that may be of some
use
to
the bodies
in
this country,
from
pressure groups
to
Parliament, as
they consider how Britain can be moved
a
bit on the open government scale.
114
[Harper
&
Row.
317
pp.
$5.95.1
JAMES
MICHAEL.
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