Citations

We present citations with links to original sources – each investigating the perils of government transparency. For more on this three-year study see the papers and talks on this site. For a summary of the theory click on this link here.

If we open up our [committees] to the public, every lobbyist in America is going to be there.
– Rep Harley Staggers (D-WV) 1973
Senate and House Open Up their Sessions

Two decades later, after the advent of sunshine laws, we know better. Open markup sessions often give organized interests a powerful advantage over inattentive citizens, for they can monitor exactly who is doing what to benefit and to hurt them.
– Douglas Arnold 1990 (Princeton) – The Logic of Congressional Action

The idea was to make the process more ‘democratic’, but in practice sunshine measures intensified the access of lobbyists.
– James Payne 1991 – Culture of Spending

The Washington Post 1984 – Opening Up Congress (pdf 1.1MBs)

The enactment of the ‘sunshine’ laws, which had opened up committee legislative drafting sessions to the public in order to dilute the power of business lobbyists, had precisely the opposite effect. They enabled business lobbyists to monitor the votes of each elected official more closely.
– David Vogel 1989 – The Political Power of Business

Some former sticklers for sunshine agreed with members who said bills were better when drafted away from lobbyists’ watchful eyes. Conversely, as some of these lobbyists sensed a slippage of their influence over the bill-writing process, they became the 1980s’ proponents of sunshine in Congress.
– Jaqueline Calmes 1987 – CQ – Fading Sunshine Reforms

Clarity and publicity kill... Officials who need to fear that their internal deliberations will be made public are less positioned to make effective public policy.
– Jerry Z. Muller 2018 – The Tyranny of Metrics

It must be recognized that there is no way to open up the legislative process to the people without also opening it up to lobbyists and interest groups.
– Joseph Bessette 1994 – Mild Voice of Reason

Since the Sunshine Rule, markup sessions are very popular events in the legislative process...Cueing up for a markup, and sweating the markup line is part of the lobbyist’s job.
– Lobbyist John Zorack 1990 – The Lobbying Handbook

In the 1970s, we junior members argued strongly for openness, as did the media. But we discovered that people posture and abandon the responsibility of legislating.
– Rep Philip Sharp 1990 – American Government and Politics

“Sunshine” changes have left members visible and vulnerable to attentive publics, most often organized interests.
– Larry Rieselbach 1994 – Encyclopedia of Policy Studies

Had the deliberations been open while going on, the clamors of faction (special interests) would have prevented any satisfactory result.
– Alexander Hamilton 1792 – History of the Republic

Transparency is a useful tool for lobbyists – it enables them to keep better track of their competitors, and to demand equal access for themselves.
– David Frum 2014 – The Transparency Trap

Everyone knows that laws which provide a secret ballot have deprived the aristocracy of all its influence.
– Cicero 50 BC – De Legibus

Francis Fukuyama 2019 – Via Twitter

Transparency in government causes the very corruption it aims to prevent, and the problem is universal.
– Michael Gilbert 2018 – Transparency and Corruption

The more open a system becomes, the more easily it can be penetrated by money, lobbyists and fanatics...Congress can now be monitored and influenced as never before. As a result, lobbies, which do most of the monitoring and influencing, have gained power.
– Fareed Zakaria 2003 – Future of Freedom

Transparency can undermine governance, even when well-intentioned.
– Richard M. Skinner 2019 – Is Congress Broken?

[The] adoption of open markup sessions, probably accounted most for exposing members to interest group pressures. Conversely, adopting closed sessions in 1983 seems to have reversed that trend.
– Sheldon D Pollack 1995 – A New Dynamics of Tax Policy?

Throughout American history, whenever we’ve been faced with a deeply entrenched internal divide, the solution has nearly always been forged within a certain zone of confidentiality.
– Jason Grumet 2014 – The Dark Side of Sunlight (City of Rivals)

Behind closed doors, lobbyists don’t know everything that is going on.
– Jason Grumet 2014 – Washington At Work

In the privacy of closed-door sessions, lawmakers are better able to reason on the merits of public policy without fear that their enemies will turn their words against them.
– Joseph Bessette & John Pitney 2011 – American Government and Politics

Those who pay closest attention to markup sessions are lobbyists who use the occasion to press for changes the serve their interests.
– Joseph Bessette & John Pitney 2011 – American Government and Politics

If you judge the committee’s work by the bottom line, they have a pretty good case for closing. It’s hard to close loopholes when there are lobbyists in the room.
– Robert S. McIntyre 1983 – Citizens for Tax Justice

The open meetings rules of the last ten years have lowered some barriers separating Members from group pressures. Lobbyists now attend markup sessions and conference committee sessions that used to be held in closed session. In this respect, Members are no longer as insulated from lobbyists as when they were able to conduct official business behind closed doors, and pressure groups are better able to hold Members accountable for their actions.
– CRS Report 1986 – Congress and Pressure Groups

Congressional dysfunction started well before the Trump presidency. It has been growing for decades, despite promise after promise and proposal after proposal to reverse it. Many explanations have been offered, from the rise of partisan media to the growth of gerrymandering to the explosion of corporate money. But one of the most important causes is usually overlooked: transparency. Something usually seen as an antidote to corruption and bad government, it turns out, is leading to both.
– James D’Angelo & Brent Ranalli 2019
The Dark Side of Sunlight (Foreign Affairs Magazine)

Rep Rob Woodall 2019 - House Modernization

On March 27, 2019, The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress and the Modernization Committee of the GOP discussed the pitfalls of transparency during a hearing about congressional reforms. And at 1:05:06, Representative Rob Woodall appears to become the first member in the history of the US Congress to openly question the 1970s sunshine laws. He suggests that increased transparency might be at the root of a number of institutional problems with Congress. Here is Woodall’s statement:

“Well I thought that was interesting in Mr. Wolfensberger’s testimony, he said he’s got six things that make these reform efforts successful. By my count four of the six things were things too much transparency might threaten 1. private informal meetings are necessary 2. check your partisan guns at the at the door 3. soliciting views from other members who are not on the on the panel 4. flexibility and the ability to compromise. At some point you know the reason I can’t take pictures on the second floor of the Capitol is you never know who I might be talking to and I want the freedom to be able to talk to who I want to talk to. We don’t have that dynamic. Zoe [Representative Zoe Lofgren] said we’re not gonna roll back cameras on the floor. I’m sure that’s true. It might have been, who mentioned transparency, it was you Mr. strand. Are we at a point where we have so many other ways to communicate to get the word out that it would be okay to dial back on some degrees of transparency because we’re highlighting that transparency elsewhere?”

Unfortunately Woodall directs the question to Mark Strand who evades, immediately turning the conversation elsewhere. But Strand he was followed by Don Wolfensberger who takes up the question saying that transparency is “a double edged sword.”

Access is vital in lobbying. If you can’t get in your door, you can’t make your case.
– Jack Abramoff 2011 – The 'Lobbyist Safecracker Method'

*NOTE: This citation pairs well with one by Lee Drutman who, when talking about lobbyists cites an old Washington adage which states “If you are not at the table, you are probably on the menu.”

Markets and states are likely to “capture” transparency arrangements for their own goals more frequently, which will not necessarily be aligned with the original normative ideals of democracy and participation. Transparency is marketized and monopolized to gain power and profits, it is used as a form of public relations in symbolic politics, it functions in disinformation and information overflow campaigns, it is part of state and market surveillance of citizen-consumers, and it can further empower the powerful as much as the powerless.
– Arthur P.J. Mol 2014
The Lost Innocence of Transparency in Environmental Politics

Sunshine rules instituted in the mid-1970s require that conference committee meetings be open to the public. However, because a public forum inhibits the hard bargaining that is often necessary, much negotiation takes place informally behind the scenes. To reach a compromise, members may need to retreat from positions they have advocated, often ones they have argued for strongly and ones with ardent interest group and constituency support; that is easier done behind closed doors.
– Barbara Sinclair 2006 – Unorthodox Lawmaking

Lobbyist Gary Hymel stated that C-SPAN cuts his office workload in half. “We don’t have to go to the House and try to keep a mental note of what’s going on... When a bill is being debated on the House floor... we take notes, eat lunch, and drink coffee, and tape it for a permanent record.”
– Stephen Frantzich & John Sullivan 1996 – The C-SPAN Revolution

There is a tension between competing values in legislating. And I think one might be transparency and deliberation. A lot of the folks who study deliberation will make the argument that it’s necessary to have some degree of secrecy, it’s necessary to be able to meet behind closed doors and have candid discussions and reach agreements outside of the spotlight. Well that is at odds with our desire for transparency and to know everything that’s going on at all times and for it to be blasted out over social media. So in some ways though those competing values – the demand for increased transparency may very well be one of the reasons why deliberation has become harder, because as soon as a member of strays from an established position, that becomes broadcast everywhere.
– Peter Hanson 2017 – Legislative Branch Capacity Working Group

The open hearings and mark-up sessions encouraged by the reform movement were one example of the changed environment. In 1973, some 30 percent of committee meetings were closed to the public, but in 1975 only 2 percent were closed. Lobbyists and special interest representatives took advantage of open meetings to press their cases. As one member of the committee observed, “Open meetings put special interests into the process and gave them an active input.” Another member commented disapprovingly that at one markup session, several members of the committee “went down and sat in the audience and talked with a specific interest and wrote an amendment, came back up and offered it.”
– Donald R. Kennon & Rebecca M. Rogers 1989
Ways and Means a Bicentennial History 1789-1989

Closed meetings facilitate getting the House’s work done, and public sessions often turn into wastes of time.
– Rep. Omar Burleson (Texas) 1957 – Advocates of Openness

*NOTE: This citation, from a member of Congress, takes place a decade before Congress opened all its committees.

We have now had a half-century of experimenting with more open processes. How is that working out? When greater transparency in Congress arrived in the 1970s, did that mean special interest had more power or less? There’s a simple (if imperfect) test. If special interests had less power, then it would not have been worthwhile to invest as much in lobbying, so more transparency should have been followed by a reduction in lobbying. Of course, the reverse is what actually happened: Lobbying rose dramatically in the 1970s, and has risen further since then. Apparently, greater political openness makes spending on lobbying more worthwhile, not less.
– Timothy Taylor 2019 – When Special Interests Play in the Sunlight

Well, going back to the seventies and opening up committees, who attends? You try to reach out to a broad public, but the people who show up are the people who have a stake in the outcome. And so as we open up committees what that opens Congress up to, is more pressure from organized interests, because they’re the ones with the strongest incentive to pay attention. And so you want to reach your constituents, you want to reach that broader audience, but most Americans are not that tuned into public affairs. And we don’t want to ask too much of that of that broad public. And as we try to reach out and make the system more representative and more accountable, we wind up making it less representative – and accountable to organized groups as opposed to that broad public.
– Frances Lee 2019 – Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress

Lobbyists and journalists report an increasing use of C-SPAN for monitoring the political process. During the early C-SPAN era, when Washington, D.C . lacked cable service, lobbying organizations dominated the list of subscribers to Capitol Connection. Today C-SPAN plays continuously in the background in most lobbying offices. As one trade association lobbyist pointed out: “I sit in my office every morning, watching C-SPAN.”
– Stephen Frantzich & John Sullivan 1996 – The C-SPAN Revolution

We were a conquering army. We came here to take the Bastille. We destroyed [Congress] by turning the lights on.
– Rep. George Miller (D-CA) 2018 – The Class of ‘74

The full citation:
Members of the Class believed that if they were able to make the institution and its procedures more transparent to the public, the House and American politics would change forever. “We were a conquering army,” recalled George Miller of California, who had been elected at the age of 29 after serving for five years as a staff aide for the California Senate majority leader. “We came here to take the Bastille. We destroyed the institution by turning the lights on.” - From Lawrence "Class of '73"

As Brent Ranalli, James G. D’Angelo, and David C. King have argued, when Congress made the votes on committees public, they empowered lobbyists to contract more effectively with members of Congress – or at least to monitor and pressure them more effectively. When the votes were secret, it was hard to know whether a deal was respected. With sunlight, everyone knows who upheld the bargain . That effect thus lowers the cost of contracting; lower the cost and you get more contracting aka, corruption.
– Lawrence Lessig 2018 – America Compromised

Through the open committee hearing, an institution of comparatively recent origin, the lobbyist now is able to speak with authority to Congress for the group or organization he represents. The open committee hearing has worked a revolution in lobbying methods. It has permitted the lobbyist to have access to members of Congress through the front instead of the back door, and has given to the title “legislative agent” something of a professional standing. In the proposal for registration of lobbyists, many of them see a welcome recognition by Congress of the new dignity of their calling and of the importance of the part they now play in the making of legislative decisions.
– CQ Reports 1928 – Changing Character of Washington Lobbies

The dark side of global transparency, sees forces spreading hatred, conflict, and lies. This darker side of transparency is less noted but, unfortunately, it will be at least as influential in the coming decades. Global transparency will indeed bring many benefits, but predictions that it will lead inevitably to peace, understanding, and democracy, are wrong.
– Kristin M. Lord 2006 – Perils and Promise of Global Transparency

The 1970s reforms that opened up congressional committees and the House floor have yielded disappointment and dysfunction on a larger scale. Initiated in earnest with the enactment of the 1970 LRA, these reforms are now believed by many to have contributed to an increase in special interest influence and a decline in institutional comity and capacity. The glare of publicity made it more difficult for members of Congress to negotiate with each other in candid, creative, and productive ways; rising levels of partisanship since the 1970s aggravated this difficulty. Lobbyists, moreover, no longer had to wait in the lobby during markup sessions and other committee meetings. While these meetings were in theory thrown open to all, only deep-pocketed outfits were able to send representatives—and to punish or reward legislators based on what the legislators said or how they voted—in any systematic fashion. By the 1980s, members and observers of Congress were routinely asserting that laws like the LRA, “which had opened up committee legislative drafting sessions to the public in order to dilute the power of business lobbyists, had precisely the opposite effect. They enabled business lobbyists to monitor the votes of each elected official more closely.”
– David Pozen 2018 – Transparency’s Ideological Drift

(If the Senate deliberations were televised) there would be less attention to legislative work and more to publicity seeking, there would be less time spent in committee and more on the floor, and the Senate floor would become an arena in which to register unrestrained advertisements of self instead of being held in reserve for the occasional registration of intensely held minority opinions and interests.
– Richard Fenno 1989 – The Senate through the Looking Glass - The Debate over Television

The theory that ‘diplomacy should proceed always frankly and in the public view’ has led to negotiation being broadcast and televised, and to all rational discussion being abandoned in favour of interminable propaganda speeches addressed, not to those with whom the delegate is supposed to be negotiating, but to his own public at home.
– Sir Harold Nicolson 1953 – The Evolution of Diplomatic Method

Even if voting is a public trust, voters need to exercise it privately to exercise it well, because… The powerless will always be prevailed upon by the powerful; only secrecy can protect them from bribery and bullying.
– Jill Lepore 2008 – Rock, Paper, Scissors

The opening up of the legislative process can make lawmakers much more directly accountable to interest groups whose support they may need for reelection. Lobbyists, after all, now actually sit in on committee markup sessions. This may constrain the policymaking efforts of lawmakers to actions that serve the interests of narrow groups at the expense of the broader public good.
– Joseph Bessette 1994 – Mild Voice of Reason

Many Republicans will say privately that they understand the science, but if they talk about climate change publicly they will prompt a primary challenge from the right — so they stay quiet, at best, or join the obstructionists in questioning the science. There has been no major change in climate science since 1979; what has changed is the politics.
– William K. Reilly 2018 – The Term “Republican Environmentalist” Is Not an Oxymoron

The primary users of the Freedom of Information Act are not journalists and crusaders seeking to reveal illicit activities; they are businesses seeking to find out what government regulators are up to and what their competitors have disclosed to government agencies. Similarly, Congressional reforms requiring publicly recorded committee votes are not of most use to the news media or constituents; they help lobbyists verify whether targeted officials have lived up to their promises to vote for or against major amendments.
– Thomas Edsall 2011 – Putting Political Reform Right (NYTimes)

Most members genuinely want[ed] to do what they thought was in the national interest if they could. That wasn’t always easy to do, however. But it was easier to do before the passage of the Sunshine laws [which required that public business be conducted in the open]. When an interest group came in, you would say, “Gosh darn, I tried to support you. I really did. The chairman bent my arm.” Then, to protect yourself, you would tell the chairman that when those guys came in, to tell them that you really fought hard on their issue.
– Sen Robert Packwood 2003 – Future of Freedom

“It’s a real dilemma for liberal reformers,” says Jeff Drumtra, director of the Tax Reform Research Group, an arm of Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen organization. “When you look at recent tax bills, the best ones have come out of closed sessions. You take what you can get and hope someday you can get a good bill at an open meeting.”
– Pamela Fessler 1985 – Rewriting Tax Code Behind Closed Doors

One example of how a closed session provides protection from special interests came when the committee voted to give banks even better tax treatment than they now enjoy… In the initial recorded vote, only one Republican member of the panel voted against the more favorable treatment for banks. But when the committee voted a second time and decided to reverse the decision, it did so on a voice vote (secret vote). Neither the public nor the bank lobbyists waiting in the hallway knew who changed sides.
– Lea Donosky 1985 – Tax Reform Behind Closed Doors

It’s not that you want to ignore the public. It’s just that the lobbyists, the pressure groups, the trade associations – they all have their pet projects. If you put something together in public, the Members are looking over at the lobbyists and the lobbyists are giving the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ signs.
– Rep Dan Rostenkowski 2002 – Too Much of a Good Thing

Jane Mansbridge 2010 – Against Accountability

One major role of politicians is to broker those diverse interests and sensibilities and to arrive at arrangements that bridge differences. This strategy entails negotiation, trading off some interests against others in an attempt to attain a compromise that will be tolerable to a number of interests, though rarely entirely satisfactory to any one of them. To put it another way, it involves the bargaining away of many positions, at least as defined by the interested parties. More often than not, that is possible only when the negotiation takes place protected from the view of the various claimants, each of whom might try to veto any compromise that struck at their publicly defined, “transparent” position. What politicians call ‘‘creative give and take” ideologues or representatives of special interests call “betrayal.” That is why on sensitive matters, the negotiating process is most effective when it takes place behind closed doors.
– Jerry Z. Muller 2018 – The Tyranny of Metrics

By now, the empirical evidence on the deliberative benefits of closed-door interactions seems incontrovertible.
– Warren & Mansbridge 2013 – Political Negotiation

While we often assume more transparent voting rules is a benefit, an examination of those rules and their origins suggests this is not always the case. In one of the few detailed discussions of the origins of recorded voting, Luce (1922) stressed that legislators needed to remain aware of both the costs and benefits of transparency. Such awareness is evident when we consider the substantial observed variance amongst recorded voting rules across history and legislative bodies.
– Lynch, Madonna & Kisaalita 2018 – Broken Record - Transparency, Position Taking and Recorded Voting in the US Congress (from upcoming 2019 book)

[From 1971, CQ article discussing the resistance to opening committees] Public markup sessions are rare. Most committees prefer to write legislation in private for a variety of reasons. Some members believe that open meetings tend to encourage greater posturing and longer speeches for public consumption. Others think committee action is hindered by the necessity of observing formal procedures. One committee, which held open markup sessions in the past but not in 1971, found that the open meetings usually attracted more lobbyists than public.
– CQ Almanac 1971 – 1970 Legislative Reorganization Act Has Little Impact

It is important to ask, moreover, who benefits from the constraints imposed by openness. Theoretically, “the public” does. In practice, however, openness too often serves the narrow purposes of special interests. Do the news media flock to our meetings? Do the public interest groups vie for seats in packed hearing rooms? Do interested consumers wait in line to hear debates on the hazards they face? Hardly.

But, without fail, you’ll find lawyers and lobbyists galore, all representing special interests. Those attending our meetings and burying us with F.O.I.A. requests are the very ones against whom the commission is considering action. They are paid to do just that.

In enacting the Sunshine and F.O.I.A. legislation, Congress wanted to give specific powers and tools to the public to guard against undue influence by special interests. Yet the very interests meant to be watched over have become the watchdogs. They, not the public, most often reap the benefits of openness, and at very high cost to the ability of government agencies to do what is expected of them.
– Stuart Statler 1981 – Let the Sunshine In?

With hearings and markups increasingly open to public scrutiny, party leaders and their interest groups were able to keep a closer eye and apply increased pressure on the decisions of committee members.
– Julian Zelizer 1998 – Taxing America

Notably, the House in the 1970s for the first time introduced recorded voting in the Committee of the Whole (Smith 1989). As Roberts and Smith (2003) convincingly demonstrate, votes on amendments in the Committee of the Whole tend to be far more partisan and divisive than other types of House votes. The introduction of recorded voting on COW amendments, along with the ease of electronic voting, quickly led to an explosion of amendment votes, driven largely by minority-party Republicans who sought to force members of the majority party to take difficult or embarrassing votes, which added a whole new and divisive set of votes to the roll-call record. As Smith explains, “[minority Republicans] actively sought ways to challenge committee products, raise ideologically charged issues, and force recorded votes. [Robert] Bauman [R-MD] even entertained requests for recorded-vote amendments from Republican challengers to Democratic incumbents in order to compel Democrats to take politically dangerous positions” (1989, 34).
– William Egar 2016 – Tarnishing Opponents, Polarizing Congress

The switch from the quiet back-room deals of the Ways and Means Committee to the more open procedures of the Finance Committee and the Senate floor shows how tax preferences thrive in the sunshine. It is relatively easy for legislators to turn down proposals for expanding tax preferences, or even to approve contractions, if their actions are hidden from public view. It is considerably more difficult to do so if legislators must vote publicly, either in committee or on the floor, to deny their constituents a share of group benefits. As Congress began in the 1970s to write tax bills more openly, legislators faced an increasing number of roll-call votes on tax preferences. In fact, during this one decade there were more than twice as many roll-call votes in favor of creating or modifying tax preferences as there had been in the six previous decades. As legislators voted publicly on these matters, they quite naturally voted to approve expanded tax preferences.
– Douglas Arnold 1990 (Princeton) – The Logic of Congressional Action

As a reporter, my biggest gripe about government transparency is that there isn’t enough of it. Opening up the business of government for public view keeps lawmakers and other officials accountable and puts voters in the loop. That’s why journalists seek out government documents; pore over lobbying, ethics and campaign finance disclosures; and camp out at the press table during Capitol Hill hearings. Recent testimony during one such committee introduced a perplexing, albeit intriguing, concept: Sunshine in government feeds the lobbyists like the actual sun nourishes a milkweed, enables them to thrive — often at the expense of ordinary folks. To make matters worse, this theory goes, transparency may breed stalemate and partisan rancor as lawmakers play to the cameras instead of brokering deals, in private, with their colleagues across the aisle. It wasn’t a bragging K Street fat cat who espoused this idea. No, it hails from academia. “When congressional proceedings are very open, the people who are most attentive are those with an economic stake: the lobbyists,” says Frances Lee, a government professor at the University of Maryland. “If everything has to happen in public, then it’s hard to get people moved off their partisan talking points.” Lee, who chairs a task force on congressional overhaul for the American Political Science Association, offered this perspective during a recent hearing of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress… While Lee’s view may be antithetical to some of journalism’s most sacrosanct principles, she says the downside of government sunshine is widely accepted in academia. And it’s a concept worth chewing on. Interest groups routinely rate lawmakers based on how they vote, factoring the scores into decisions on endorsements and campaign donations. Do average voters plot out such stats? “Who has the money to pay people to attend committee meetings?” Lee says. “It’s true that anyone in society in theory can go, but the bulk [of attendees] are the corporate interests.”
– Kate Ackley 2019 – Too Much Sunshine Can Sometimes Burn

Of course, most roll call positions considered in isolation are not likely to cause much of a ripple at home. But broad voting patterns can and do; member “ratings” calculated by the Americans for Democratic Action, Americans for Constitutional Action, and other outfits are used as guidelines in the deploying of electoral resources. And particular issues often have their alert publics. Some national interest groups watch the votes of all congressmen on single issues and ostentatiously try to reward or punish members for their positions.
– David Mayhew 1974 – The Electoral Connection

Information, data and the unbounded flow of more and more speech can be politicized...when that happens...transparency and the unbounded flow of speech become instruments in the production of the very inequalities (economic, political, educational) that the gospel of openness promises to remove. And the more this gospel is preached and believed, the more that the answer to everything is assumed to be data uncorrupted by interests and motives, the easier it will be for interest and motives to operate under transparency’s cover...Because it is an article of their faith that politics are bad and the unmediated encounter with data is good, internet prophets will fail to see the political implications of what they are trying to do, for in their eyes political implications are what they are doing away with.
– Stanley Fish 2018 – ‘Transparency’ is the Mother of Fake News

Senator Howell Helfin 1986 - A Sonnet on Transparency

Turn the spotlight over here.
Focus the camera at my place.
Pages, please don't come near,
Otherwise, you just might block my face.

Some have made the worst claim yet,
That viewers will tire from the dull plot,
But I'll be willing to make a bet
Lobbyists will watch a whole lot.

The recorded teller vote, he recognized, is in principle good for democracy, but even this has another side. ‘The amending process became a ‘gotcha’ process rather than a legislative process. It enabled all of these single-issue groups to get a roll call on everything and run a TV ad against you financed by special interests’
– Rep. David Obey 2014 – Schudson (Rise of Right to Know)

Full transparency in government, in professional-client relations, and in personal life can do great harm. It threatens privacy. It threatens relations of intimacy that invariably are built on closely held confidences. In government or other decision-making groups it inhibits honest conversation. It may expose vulnerable individuals or groups to intimidation by powerful and potentially malevolent authorities.
– Michael Schudson 2014 – The Rise of Right to Know

Catherine Rudder 1977 – Committee Reform

A broad movement toward “government in the sunshine” resulted in widespread changes in the internal processes of governing institutions. In Congress, for example, the early 1970s saw the opening of many committee meetings to the public and a movement away from anonymous voting procedures (voice, standing, and teller voting) in favor of putting everything on the record, a development that accelerated after electronic voting was instituted. Although government reformers believed that greater transparency would make it more difficult for members of Congress to conceal votes cast on behalf of special interests, they seem to have ignored the symmetric possibility that more openness made it much easier for special interests to determine whether members were actually delivering on their end of the deal. Many scholars pondered the consequences of congressional decentralization in the 1970s, but fewer reflected on the consequences of making the activities of its members so much more visible to interest groups.
– Mo Fiorina 2012 – Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation

Among the biggest skeptics of broadcasting Senate proceedings was a freshman senator who had won his 1984 election in part by mocking a Democratic incumbent for his low Senate visibility. “I remember thinking it would be a big mistake, and voting against it,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told C-SPAN in a special interview celebrating the anniversary...There has been grandstanding for the cameras, for certain. Last year, three Senate freshmen running for president — Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — drew the ire of Senate elders who accused them of using the floor for political benefit, including Cruz’s labeling of McConnell as a liar based on a trade deal...“This is a high and holy calling, it is not something to take for granted,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the longest-serving Republican, said in a speech rebuffing the trio. Hatch pleaded for restraint from turning the floor into “a forum for advancing personal ambition.”
– Paul Kane 2016 – 30 Years of C-SPAN’s Senate Broadcasts

The 1975 rules change that opened to the public all Senate committee meetings, including mark-up sessions, has had a major impact upon committee functioning...Almost all committee decision-making sessions are now open to the public and the press. Senators’ actions are subject to direct scrutiny by lobbyists who compose much of the often large audience for mark-up sessions... Open mark-ups and conference committee meetings give interest groups without strong ties to influential committee members a better chance to have an impact on committee decisions. Such groups now have much more access to timely information. The opening of mark-ups changes the dynamics of decision making. With press and lobbyists watching, compromise may be more difficult, and grandstanding may be encouraged.
– Barbara Sinclair 1989 – Transformation of the US Senate

In 1986...The open mark-up session had gotten completely out of hand; majorities had approved tax breaks for special interests that cost billions and made a mockery of the reform label.
– Barbara Sinclair 1989 – Transformation of the US Senate

In order to encourage consensus, since 1983, the chairman has held more closed committee meetings than his predecessor. Although open meetings during the “sunshine” era of the 1970s were meant to improve the committee’s proceedings by exposing them to public scrutiny, the public that attended committee meetings was composed mainly of lobbyists. Committee members appreciate the opportunity closed meetings provide for candid discussion, and they believe that their legislative product is improved because of closed sessions. Bill Frenzel (R-MN), for instance, has reversed his opposition to closed meetings: “Since our meetings have been closed, our work has been less flawed… and our consensuses much stronger. I think it’s the only way to fly.”
– Donald R. Kennon & Rebecca M. Rogers 1989 – Ways and Means a Bicentennial History 1789-1989

The [1911] rules served to break up the small clique in power and gave the representatives generally more control of procedure. This was a blow to the old lobby. It was patently impossible to attempt to cajole or bribe an entire Congress. Another reform in the legislative procedure that tended to improve the methods of the lobbyists was the adoption on the part of Congress in the early years of this century of the policy of holding on all important bills, open committee hearings which the proponents and the opponents of a measure might attend and there state, frankly and publicly, their attitude toward the legislation under consideration. Only the hearings of the Appropriations Committee are now held in executive session as a general rule. By thus openly testifying before committees the lobbyists of legitimate interests can make their appeal to a much wider audience. Not only Congress but the whole country as well may know their arguments for a bill. The frankness of the legitimate interests makes it necessary for the questionable lobbyist to assume a like guise. It is not possible to work behind “closed doors” to the same extent. The general public is thus enabled to understand more clearly the forces that are interested in certain legislation.”
– Pendelton Herring 1929 – Group Representation Before Congress

The impact of congressional reform upon the substance of Ways and Means legislation was not precisely what reformers had hoped for. Committee member William J. Green (D-PA) observed after the first year of the Ullman committee that liberal expectations had proven to be “a lot of journalistic excess,” even though the composition of the committee had been altered in a liberal direction… Opening up the committee procedure, paradoxically perhaps, opened tax legislation to demands for even greater tax reductions and benefits that were not always in the public interest.
– Donald R. Kennon & Rebecca M. Rogers 1989 – Ways and Means a Bicentennial History 1789-1989

The day secrecy is abolished, negotiation of any kind will become impossible.
– Jules Cambon 1935 – Secret Diplomacy

It is a truism of government that compromise cannot be pressed in public; the open forum of the parliamentary floor is well designed for ideology and rhetoric, but the real areas of agreement are more often to be found in committees, corridors, and cloakrooms.
– Floyd Matson 1955 – In Defense of Compromise

The most sophisticated criticism of open meeting legislation is that necessary negotiation and compromise are prevented by public discussion. Critics note that special-interest lobbyists are now able to attend bill-writing sessions of the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means committees. Such lobbyists can scrutinized the activities of their tax-writing congressional friends, who with open meetings lose the opportunity of dropping a special-interest tax exemption in a closed meeting and telling a white lie to a lobbyist friend about what happened behind closed doors. One Ways and Means Committee member told me that he sees “lots of lobbyists” at open committee meetings, but he “doesn’t see lots of housewives coming down from the suburbs.”
– Andrew S. McFarland 1984 – Lobbying in the Public Interest (Common Cause)

The results [of opening up the conference committees in 1975] is that under the watchful eye of lobbyists, conferees tend to fight harder for provisions they might have dropped quietly in the interests of bicameral agreement. In 1981, for example, a key farm lobbyist was credited with influencing the agricultural conference “just by sitting in the front row.” His presence was significant because “members know that he will report back to the sugar growers telling them who their friends are, and his mere presence reminds the lawmakers how the game is played.”
– Longley & Oleszek 1989 – Bicameral Politics

In an open meeting, the lobbyist knows “who does what, says what, and stands for what.” The conferee’s decision is there for all to see, and “promise-making includes promise keeping.” Besides pressures on conferees arising from lobbyists’ presence, open conference sessions give lobbyists and other interested parties the ability to know more precisely and accurately what is going on. When conferences were closed, a lobbyist’s knowledge of the proceedings was less certain because he generally could monitor the conferences only through information supplied him by conferees who favored his viewpoint. Allies are not always perfect information sources, especially if they have modified or wavered in their initial views and positions. Now, having more complete and direct information through personal observation of conference negotiations, lobbyists can better ensure that their influence and persuasive efforts bear fruit.
– Longley & Oleszek 1989 – Bicameral Politics

In many cases, however, there is little political isolation for the conferees. Instead external participants such as the president, representatives of governmental agencies, and interest groups have intense interest and impact on the conference deliberations. “This is not a conference between the two houses,” remarked Senator John Danforth (R. Mo) in 1988 about the omnibus trade conference of the 100th Congress. “It’s a conference between Congress and the administration.” Some conferences, in brief, operate in relative isolation’ others are deeply immersed in politically volatile webs of interests and pressure.
– Longley & Oleszek 1989 – Bicameral Politics

The relentlessly open quality of congressional procedures is one of the reasons Congress is among the least liked institutions, political or nonpolitical.
– Hibbing & Thierse-Morse 2004 – Stealth Democracy

It used to be that secrecy was seen as essential to good government, especially when it came to crafting legislation. Terrified of outside pressures, the framers of the U.S. Constitution worked in strict privacy, boarding up the windows of Independence Hall and stationing armed sentinels at the door. As Alexander Hamilton later explained, “Had the deliberations been open while going on, the clamors of faction would have prevented any satisfactory result.” James Madison concurred, claiming, “No Constitution would ever have been adopted by the convention if the debates had been public.” The Founding Fathers even wrote opacity into the Constitution, permitting legislators to withhold publication of the parts of proceedings that “may in their Judgment require Secrecy.”
– James D’Angelo & Brent Ranalli 2019
The Dark Side of Sunlight (Foreign Affairs Magazine)

Before the reforms, it was much more difficult to hold individual members accountable for specific provisions of tax legislation. Instead, bills were collective, privately forged committee products that were presented to the House in a take-it-or-leave-it manner... With the congressional reforms the balance of power shifted. To retain their seats and to win House approval of committee bills, Ways and Means members had to be more responsive to requests from constituents, organized interests, and their House colleagues. These new pressures were intensified by the sunlight of open meetings. Ways and Means members could now be held accountable for their positions on every provision that made up a tax package. In short, the Ways and Means Committee was easier to penetrate, particularly by organized interests, and much less autonomous. In turn, the committee could no longer provide cover for House members.
– Catherine Rudder 1989 – Fairness and the Revenue Committees

Reformers ought to steer clear of always trying to ensure more democracy, more openness. I think the constant pressure for “more democracy” has had some negative consequences. The openness in Congress has meant being open to organized interests, not to a broad public. Opening up the the parties has just made them more accountable to activist groups. Openness is not always the solution. It’s the easiest normative rationale one can offer for reform proposals. But in the real world it often has negative consequences.
– Frances Lee 2018 – The Parties Are Dying

Ray Dennison, an AFL-CIO lobbyist who opposed the trade bill, said he always prefers open markups and found the closed trade bill sessions particularly unfair.
– CQ Quarterly 1973 – Senate and House Open Up their Sessions

*NOTE: Dennison is a lobbyist who is explicitly calling for more transparency.

The idea that more transparency in government is always an unalloyed good is a dangerous populist illusion...The demand to see decisions being made is more often about giving reporters fodder for juicy stories or enabling groups to pressure decision-makers than helping voters make decisions.
– Francis Fukuyama 2015 – The Limits of Transparency

The Mitchell-sponsored talks were conducted behind closed doors and they spurned roll-call votes that would have revealed the legislative divisions. Mitchell believed, probably correctly, that senators would not get down to hard negotiating on environmental issues so long as they were in the public spotlight, where they might make statements that a political opponent could use against them.
– Richard Cohen 1994 p88 – Washington at Work: Back Rooms and Clean Air

*NOTE: This citation refers to the successful passage of the 1990 Clean Air Amendments (the most powerful environmental legislation in the past 40 years), which were brokered almost exclusively behind closed doors by Mitchell and others expressly to avoid the pressure of lobbyists. Full citation can be found here.

Opening meetings to the public has meant opening meetings to everyone, including lobbyists, who, it has been claimed, take an even greater part in writing Ways and Means legislation than they did in the past...Thus, the open meetings have made members more accountable to whoever cares to pay attention.
– Catherine Rudder 1977 – Committee Reform

Senator Dale Bumpers 1999 NY Times

After the 1976 Government in the Sunshine Act required that congressional committee meetings be public, surveys of senators soon concluded that these open meeting requirements were the largest single cause of a decline in the ability to negotiate and to make politically difficult trade-offs.
– Richard Pildes 2014 – Romanticizing Democracy

The silent majority is not going to be present at the open markups of the bills; they are going to be too busy and too occupied otherwise. But if you have open markup on bills...do you not think that the special interests will be there? The silent majority will not be there, but the special interests will be well represented.
– Rep George Mahon 1970 – Donald Wolfensberger (Congress & the People)

Sen. Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, while supporting some means of unfiltered public exposure of Congress to the public through television, called attention to shortcomings in network coverage of committee hearings. “We all know that conflict makes news,” he said. “We also know that a televised shouting match usually concentrates more on the exchange of insults than the exchange of ideas.” In fact, “a congressional investigation receives more attention when important voices--but not necessarily significant questions--are raised.” Moreover, “the bulk of our productive work in the Senate,” what Muskie called “the actual exercise of legislating,” receives little attention from the media. In committees with open markup sessions, “private interests have been well represented in the audience – as lobbyists – while the public interest – in the form of journalists – has been noticeably absent.” He concluded on this point that “a clash of opinion is innately more newsworthy than the resolution of those differences.”
– Donald Wolfensberger 2000 – Congress & the People

Because this Government is Republican, it will not be pretended that it can have no secrets…To discuss the secret transactions of the Government publicly, was the ready way to sacrifice the public interest.
– Debates and Proceedings of US Congress 1798

An action performed in public is more susceptible to influence by other agents than an action performed in secret is. Therefore those with the most resources at their disposal are in a better position to influence the behavior of others if such behavior takes place in the open than if it is performed in secrecy. I see no way of escaping that influence.
– Bernard Manin 2015 – Secrecy and Publicity

Harry Cooper – 2017 Politico

There are, in short, more people than ever before watching Congress, and fewer secrets that can be kept hidden. The work of Congress is more than ever before a public enterprise, and information about what is happening, and why, is readily available to those who know how to obtain it. It is precisely the very openness of the process that makes Congress so susceptible to influence by lobbyists.
– Bruce Wolpe 1990 – Lobbying Congress

Efforts to dampen corruption with transparency usually threaten to promote it. The source of the problem is easy to explain. Corruption requires bargaining. By sharing information, transparency lowers the transaction costs of corrupt bargaining.
– Michael Gilbert 2018 – Transparency and Corruption

This openness presumably made Congress more accountable to the general public. In some cases, however, the main beneficiaries have been organized interest groups – which, unlike the general public, closely monitor legislative activity and keep track of friends and enemies.
– Paul Quirk 1991 – Evaluating Congressional Reform

The effect of open committee meetings, although intended to bring committee ties to organized groups into the “sunshine,” is more debatable. The attentive audience for committee meetings is often precisely those groups; and indeed committees have defended private negotiations and closed sessions as ways to reduce group pressure.
– Paul Quirk 1991 – Evaluating Congressional Reform

REGULATING CONSTITUENCY PRESSURE: The most important threat to effective deliberation in Congress in general is probably pressure from powerful constituencies. On issues that are sufficiently salient, the pressure comes primarily from the mass public. On other issues, it comes mainly from interest groups. Congress has limited means to regulate those pressures, which are essential features of a democratic political system. In any case constituency demands and partisan electoral goals have also constrained efforts to do so.

Prior to 1970, much congressional activity was not readily observed by ordinary citizens. Many committee meetings, including most bill-drafting or "markup" sessions, were closed to the public. Floor debate was not televised. Many important floor votes were conducted as unrecorded voice votes, with the presiding officer simply calling for the yeas and nays and judging which were louder. The public learned only which side had won, not how their representatives had voted. As Bessette points out, the closed arrangements had the advantage of permitting members to deliberate with some autonomy.
– Paul Quirk & Sarah Binder 2005 – Institutions of American Democracy

Meetings occur behind closed doors so lawmakers can escape pressures from lobbyists and reporters, who have made it more difficult for them to handle business “in the sunshine.”
– Richard Cohen 1994 – Washington at Work: Back Rooms and Clean Air

*NOTE: This citation refers to the successful passage of the 1990 Clean Air Amendments (the most powerful environmental legislation in the past 40 years), which were brokered almost exclusively behind closed doors by Mitchell and others expressly to avoid the pressure of lobbyists. Full citation can be found here.

Facing unprecedented exposure to public observation, members of Congress are now more prone to take unyielding stands on behalf of attentive constituencies (special interests) and to defer to uninformed prejudices of the general public.
– Paul Quirk 1991 – Evaluating Congressional Reform

Sarah Binder 2015 - Downsides of Transparency (Order in the House)

“Would we have seen the emergence of these restrictive rules even without the rules changed in the 1970s? Perhaps...But I think much of what we see in the House today, the roots lie in these reforms of the 70s, which obviously were originally in the pursuit of greater transparency and greater accountability.”

‘Sunshine’ laws have opened committee hearings to the gaze of the public, or more frequently in practice to lobbyists.
– Graham Wilson 1981 – Interest Groups in the United States

Contrary to the naive sirens of maximum democracy, greater transparency is as much a problem for good governance as it is a solution.
– Bruce Cain 2014 – The Transparency Paradox

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the desire for private conversation – even among public officials… It’s time to let common sense reign and let government personnel communicate with each other through the medium of their choosing with a presumption of privacy.
– Matt Yglesias 2016 – Against Transparency

Secrecy is an important shield for conferees against pressures from outside.
– Pressman 1966 – Bicameral Politics (Longley & Oleszek)

Instead of waiting in uncomfortable corridors, lobbyists and reporters...now wait in uncomfortable committee rooms, mostly small old ones in the Capitol designed for private meetings.
– Clymer 1977 – Bicameral Politics (Longley & Oleszek)

In the real world of American politics, interested individuals and organizations, not average citizens, have the greater incentive and means to monitor the government closely. This can open the door to obstruction and policy distortion as it enables regulatory capture by interested parties who advocate freely for their views without any countervailing public voice.
– Bruce Cain 2014 – The Transparency Paradox

There continues to be a dearth of studies empirically testing the theoretical claims of transparency advocates, even as legislation and institutional support for their case accumulates exponentially.
– Amitai Etzioni 2010 – Is Transparency the Best Disinfectant?

Ezra Klein – 2013 Washington Post

Professor Frances Lee of the University of Maryland political science department said that certain practices that have been undertaken in pursuit of transparency can impair legislative deliberation since they disproportionately allow outside interest groups to influence decision makers and they incentivize Members to focus on public-facing messaging rather than negotiating with colleagues...Lee was not the only person to highlight the unintended consequences that greater openness brings. Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) noted how important civil rights legislation passed Congress due to closed-door negotiations. “I’m not sure that Lyndon Johnson would have been able to get the civil rights bill or the Voting Rights Act approved if the world was involved in hearing and viewing his interactions, and the deal making…that took place to get that done,” he said.
– Mark Strand 2019 – Hearing on Legislative Transparency

Because I can see exactly how you vote, you can easily sell your vote to me. Enter anonymous voting, which made it impossible legally for me to be confident about how you, the voter, votes. No doubt, you could promise me that you’ll vote as I wish, but you could just as well promise the same thing to the other side. The price I’d be willing to pay, then, for your vote is much, much less (discounted for the possibility that you’ve also sold your vote to the other side). And by lowering the price, this ingenious reform lowered the significance of vote buying [campaign finance?] substantially.
– Lawrence Lessig 2011 – Republic Lost

Indeed, the push for more transparency is often advocated by lobbyists themselves, eager for legal clarity and happy to present themselves as fulfilling a vital role in modern democracies through the information they provide to policymakers.
– Harry Cooper 2017 – Politico

Both Madison and Hamilton, then, did not think secret sessions of the national legislature antithetical to the spirit of republican government. Although the government, they might have said with Lincoln, is of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is a government in which the people do not directly participate. The people, according to the First Amendment, have the right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” but they do not have the right to know about all the deliberations that take place in Congress. Although Article 1, Section 3, of the Constitution requires each House to keep a journal of its proceedings, it also allows that each House may leave out “such parts as may in their judgment require secrecy…” The Founding Fathers did not extol secrecy, but neither did they rule it out. And they probably would have had grave reservations about the spate of laws enacted in the mid-1970s that make the American government the most open government in history.
– Stephen Miller 1983 – Special Interest Groups in American Politics

The supposition that transparency uniquely empowers regular folks is quaint fantasy. By and large, those combing the public records and filing information requests are not your neighbors. Generally, they are junior associates at big law firms searching for some detail that can be used to challenge a federal decision that is at odds with their client’s interests... The popular distrust of government officials has taken a toll on a political system that requires the collaboration of divergent interests. It is time to dispel the simplistic notion that transparency in government is an unmitigated good and recognize the role of privacy in nurturing honesty, creativity, and collaboration.
– Jason Grumet 2014 – The Dark Side of Sunlight (City of Rivals)

Institutional systems characterized as open and accountable should exhibit higher levels of direct lobbying and a broader range of inside lobbying tactics, as policymakers in those systems are driven by the reelection motive to be receptive to communications from advocates about the views of their constituents. Thus, advocates in the United States are expected to display higher levels and a broader range of inside lobbying tactics.

In addition, the role of democratic institutional design should also be perceived within a polity by investigating inside lobbying across the primary political institutions of the political system. Thus in the United States, the U.S. Congress, the most open and accountable of U.S. institutions, should be the object of more inside lobbying than executive agencies or the White House. In the European Union, the Council, the most nontransparent and unaccountable of EU institutions, should be the object of the least amount of inside lobbying.
– Christine Mahoney 2008 – Brussels vs. the Beltway

If transparency is not reduced to what it is, a means, it is a threat, so that democracy has realized the dream of totalitarianism. The demand for excess transparency is no longer the quintessence of democracy, but rather its direct opposite.
– G. Carcassone 2001 – Le Trouble De La Transparence

Long said open committee meetings would mean more pressure from organized lobbies trying to force a decision in their direction...“There are times,” he told the Senate, “when the Committee on Finance is going to have to close its doors to protect the interests of the country and discharge its obligations. It is our duty, to vote to hold a meeting behind closed doors when that becomes necessary either to protect national secrets or to reduce the power of an organized group to try to stampede the committee. The Senate should not make it any more embarrassing and difficult than it needs to be to arrive at this result.”
– Finance Committee Chair, Russell Long 1973
– Senate, House Modify Secrecy Rules

“Every time action is taken to close the session,” said John O. Pastore (D R.I.), ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee, “it raises an atmosphere of suspicion that the committee has something to hide. That is the thing that disturbs me.” He said senators would be reluctant to close even those hearings which should be closed and that classified information might be revealed. “When you tell me you are mandating to open up these hearings to the public,” Pastore declared, “I am afraid we are playing footsies with the security of this country.”
– Ranking Member on Commerce – John Pastore (D R.I.) 1973
– Senate, House Modify Secrecy Rules

The temptations of television are seductive, but they may also be destructive. The risks are many and serious. Instead of informing our people, televised House proceedings may confuse them. Instead of educating it may bore them and make them impatient. Instead of polishing the image of the House, the consequences of broadcasting may further tarnish it. Instead of maintaining the dignity of the House, television may encourage circus antics. Instead of improving the legislative process, television may degrade it. And instead of enhancing the democratic process, television may corrode and cheapen it.
– Rep. Del Clawson 1976 – Congress and the People

Bruce Cain 2016 – Debate “Is Government Too Open”

As for special interest representation, the nation’s capital is filled with lobbying groups and associations. There are scores of industry associations, public affairs lobbies, single-interest groups, and many other advocacy organizations. Special interest groups are major policymaking players...Many interest groups also are informally affiliated with one party or the other, and their demands for loyalty make it difficult for lawmakers to compromise. Ironically, some of the sunshine reforms of the 1970s had the unintended consequence of strengthening the role of special interests.
– Walter Oleszek 2011 – Secrecy and Transparency

Most committee staffers and MLAs agree that the closed markup in SASC results in a more efficient and candid policymaking process. Without reporters or lobbyists in the room, Senators are free to debate difficult decisions and make deals without the pressures to posture or conform to narrow ideological or parochial views. …The closed markup allows Senators with those concerns to sometimes craft a deal with others on the committee that would have been politically impossible if lobbyists or reporters were present. Compromise often requires some degree of anonymity, and certainly the closed markup in SASC is testimony to that reality. [Many staffers] are highly skeptical about the benefits of an open process. While increased transparency is certainly valued, many believe an open process would undermine vigorous and frank debate, and also frustrate compromise and bipartisanship.
– Colleen Shogan 2011 – The Senate’s Last Best Hope

A former SASC staff director explained, “Senate Armed Services has never had an open markup, and I’m proud of that. …Why should we do it in the open? It would wreck the seriousness of the purpose. Staff needs to give candid views to Senators, and you can’t do that in open session. Governing in the sunshine shouldn’t be applied to everything. In the House, open markup forces cutting deals behind closed doors” (Interview with Arnold Punaro, 3/10/2011). Another argument focuses on efficiency. Whereas the entire markup process is usually completed in one week, there is general agreement that an open process would extend markup considerably. One MLA remarked that the two-day full committee markup could last for more than two weeks if it was opened to the public (Interview with Senate staffer, 1/20/2011). Another staffer concurred, “The effect of the closed session is that the lobbyists don’t know about the bill until it comes out. Coming up with a deal is a lot harder when an amendment is made public and circulates all over this town” (Interview with Senate staffer, 1/13/2011).
– Colleen Shogan 2011 – The Senate’s Last Best Hope

These results demonstrate that individuals and groups interested in increasing the likelihood that politicians identify and pass compromise deals need to find a way to insulate the elected officials during the negotiation phase. [Our] evidence indicates that politicians can and should be given some privacy during the negotiation process so they can consider effective compromise solutions.
– Anderson, Butler, Harbridge-Yong 2018 – Closed-Door Compromise

The number of important changes affecting Congress over the last three decades is remarkable. They include: the transformation of the U.S. Senate from an encapsulated men's club, a "citadel" in the description of one of its observers, into a publicity machine operated for the purpose of linking senators with national interest groups and factions.
– Nelson Polsby 1982 – Contemporary Transformations of American Politics

Sinclair writes that the Senate has been transformed from a committee-centered, member expertise dependent, inward looking, and relatively closed institution that was characterized by an unequal distribution of influence and constraining norms to an open, staff dependent, outward looking institution in which influence is much more equally distributed and members are accorded very wide latitude. Sinclair argues that as a result of these changes the Senate of today can encounter great difficulty in making decisions. Nelson Polsby has called the Senate a publicity machine operated for the purpose of linking senators with national interest groups and factions.
– Al Kaltman 2017 – Leadership

What is striking about the making of air pollution policy in the European Union, however, is that while it has undoubtedly been a difficult process, the Council of Ministers has been able to arrive at compromises and adopt legislation far more easily than has the U.S. Congress. Legislation addressing the issue of acid rain and vehicle emissions was agreed to far more quickly than was the Clear Air Act of 1990. Those attributes that the U.S. Congress adopted to make the compromises that ultimately led to success – secrecy, bargains, and side payments – have been intrinsic to the way the Council of Ministers works.
– Alberta Sbragia 2004 – The United States and the European Union Compared

Through skillful use of public arenas (transparency), a nonmember (lobbyist, special interest) may be able to pressure committee members to take up an issue they would rather ignore… Not only can nonmembers often influence the shape of legislation, they can often influence committee agendas.
– Barbara Sinclair 1989 – Transformation of the US Senate

The authors discuss the importance of closed-door negotiations for successful legislative compromise. Using experimental data collected from state legislators, the authors demonstrate that lawmakers expect private negotiations to result in successful compromises more often than public negotiations.
– Anderson, Butler, Harbridge-Yong 2018 – Closed-Door Compromise

In both studies, subjects compromised less when "performing" before an audience of constituents than when no audience was present during negotiations.
– Daniel Druckman 1994 – Determinants of Compromising Behavior in Negotiation

Transparency often imposes direct costs on successful deal making, public attention increases the incentive of lawmakers to adhere to party messages, a step rarely conducive to setting aside differences and negotiating a deal.
– Sarah Binder & Frances Lee 2013 – Political Negotiation

A senator periodically receives a record showing the number of times, by percentage, that he or she has voted with each of the other 99 senators. When I first came to the Senate, there were Democrats mixed in with Republicans and vice versa. Today, except for procedural votes, or what are often called throwaways, it’s rare for more than two or three senators to cross party lines on a vote. Nothing could more starkly demonstrate the fog of partisanship that has enveloped the Senate.
– Senator Dale Bumpers 1999 – How Sunshine Harmed Congress

Justin Fox 2006 – Government Transparency and Policymaking

We argue that making lawmakers more accountable to the public by making it easier to identify their policy choices can have negative consequences. Our model suggests that when lawmakers expect their policy choices to be widely publicized, for those lawmakers sufficiently concerned about reelection, the desire to select policies that lead the public to believe they are unbiased will trump the incentive to select those policies that are best for their constituents. Hence, lawmakers who would do the right thing behind close doors may no longer do so when policy is determined in the open.
– Justin Fox 2006 – Government Transparency and Policymaking

Justin Fox 2011 – Costly Transarency

While most of the [increases in transparency] Congress made during this period were not in response to any great outpouring of public sentiment – more than one observer has noted that “congressional reform has no constituency” - they did have the support of various interest groups as well as of editorial writers and columnists.
– Donald Wolfensburger 2000 – Dawning of the Sunshine Seventies

Bentham’s idea is that secret voting should be used in assemblies when, but only when, “circumstances render a hidden influence suspected.” In such circumstances, open voting allows credible commitments by voters to third parties who can corrupt the voters with threats or bribes, and open voting will produce falsification of preferences or judgments. Hence “to demand a ballot, is to appeal from the apparent to the real wish of the assembly.”
– Adrian Vermeule 2010 (Harvard Law) – Open-Secret Voting

The idea that Washington would work better if there were TV cameras monitoring every conversation gets it exactly wrong. We don’t need smoke-filled back rooms, but we must protect the private spaces where people with different points of view are able to work through their disagreements. The lack of opportunities for honest dialogue and creative give-and-take lies at the root of today’s dysfunction.
– Senator Tom Daschle 2014 – City of Rivals

We’ve probably gone too far in the direction of transparency in a number of government deliberative processes.
– Lee Drutman 2016 – Chaos of American Politics

Cass R. Sunstein 2016 – Output Transparency vs. Input Transparency

The primary effect of opening committee meetings is that it gives lobbyists more information, and thus more power. It makes lobbying—the art of influencing government officials—a more effective, scientific discipline. It makes it harder for representatives to shake off the cajoling of lobbyists with a friendly white lie. It allows lobbyists to prove to their principals at the home office, with hard data, that their efforts pay off, that investment in legislative influence can be profitable.
– Brent Ranalli 2017 – Sunshine Reforms and Transformation of Congressional Lobbying

The intimidation factor is alive and well on Capitol Hill, where most members, while privately resenting the pressure, dutifully toe the Israeli line. If voting were kept secret, I am confident that aid to Israel would have long ago been heavily conditioned – if not terminated – in both chambers.
– Rep. Paul Findley 2003 – They Dare To Speak Out

The results demonstrate that the failure of previous research to analyze interaction effects have led scholars to draw inadequate and misleading conclusions about the link between transparency, democracy and corruption...Fisher, Ury and Patton even claim that “a good case can be made for changing Woodrow Wilson’s slogan ‘open covenants openly arrived at’ to ‘open covenants privately arrived at’”, arguing that negotiators will produce wise agreements more easily in private than in public.
– Catharina Lindstedt & Daniel Naurin 2005 – Transparency and Corruption

Is it possible that opaque ‘backstage’ areas of politics may in fact, under some circumstances, be more civil in the deliberative sense—more characterised by arguing with reference to public interests and ideals and less affected by self-interested bargaining and pressure politics—than the public ‘frontstage’? At the least, Joerges and Neyer’s and Eliasoph’s findings demonstrate the prevailing ambiguity about the effects of transparency and publicity on political behaviour.
– Daniel Naurin 2007 – Deliberation Behind Closed Doors

“Scholars must recognize that election fraud, whatever its precise level or influence, was a common characteristic of Gilded Age elections.” According to Argersinger, the existence of three factors created an environment ripe for electoral fraud during this period: “electoral competitiveness, partisan or weak institutional arrangements [e.g. no secret ballot], and an ‘indulgent’ political culture.”
– Gail Buttorff 2008 – Detecting Fraud in America’s Gilded Age

Arguments against more transparency while merited in a few instances are often not only limited in application, but fundamentally flawed.
– Vishwanath & Kaufmann 1999 – Toward Transparency

The government-in-the-sunshine movement may have had its greatest effect on deliberation in the committee markup stage. When these sessions were secret, congressmen were not strictly accountable for their opinions and actions on the details of a legislative proposal. They had little reason to fear offending a powerful constituency or interest group if they failed to back their requests in every respect. Now these same groups are actually present during the line-by-line reworking of the bill. They can monitor the congressman’s actions on every vital point. It is hard to imagine how any truly deliberative process – of openness to information and argument, of reasoned give and take, and of education on the substance of policy – can occur in such an environment.
– Joseph Bessette 1982 – Is Congress A Deliberative Body?

Norman Ornstein 1973 – What Makes Congress Run?

Despite the general perception that lobbyists prefer opacity with regards to the disclosure of their activities, the OECD’s surveys show that the majority of surveyed lobbyists support mandatory disclosure of information.
– OECD 2013 – Transparency and Integrity

The use of electronic voting in the House has also made it easier for interest groups to follow and grade members. The most famous of these scores are produced by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the American Conservative Union (ACU), but almost all interest groups create some kind of ‘score’ that shows how closely member votes align with the group’s position. These scores are invaluable for group members, who can use them when contacting their representatives or when deciding whether to support (finance) the incumbent in future elections (or funding the campaign of their competitor)...The adoption of electronic voting provided the majority leadership with powerful tools with which to influence legislative outcomes.
– Jacob Straus 2012 – The Rise of Roll Call Votes

Once lobbyists knew your every vote, they used it as ammunition...America is increasingly embracing a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness as the key measures of legitimacy. This ideology has necessitated the destruction of old institutions, the undermining of traditional authority, and the triumph of organized interest groups, all in the name of  “the people.”
– Fareed Zakaria 2003 – Future of Freedom

To reduce the dominating and distracting effect that the press, home audiences, and third parties (lobbyists) may have, it is useful to establish private and confidential means of communicating with the other side. You can also improve communication by limiting the size of the group meeting. In the negotiations over the city of Trieste in 1954, for example, little progress was made in the talks among Yugoslavia, Britain, and the United States until the three principal negotiators abandoned their large delegations and started meeting alone and informally in a private house. A good case can be made for changing Woodrow Wilson's appealing slogan “Open covenants openly arrived at” to “Open covenants privately arrived at.” No matter how many people are involved in a negotiation, important decisions are typically made when no more than two people are in the room.
– Roger Fisher & William Ury 1987 – Getting to Yes

*NOTE: Harvard negotiation experts Fisher and Ury mention Trieste, but other salient and important examples abound such as Kennedy’s private communications with Khrushchev which averted nuclear war and Mitchell’s closed door sessions which helped resolve the situation in Northern Ireland. In both cases it appears that secrecy was essential to the peaceful negotiation. These ideas are covered in an important paper by Finel titled ‘The Surprising Logic of Transparency.’

Contributions are offered and accepted, solicited and anted up, when legislation is being drafted, considered in committee, voted on on the floor, or considered for repeal.
– Amitai Etzioni 1998 – Capital Corruption

World Bank Report – Litvack 2011 / Blair 2000

Polarization is a cost of many of these good government reforms. It is almost an intended cost if you think about it... Transparency, open meetings, bans on earmarks, and weaker party machines make compromise more difficult.
– Nathaniel Persily 2014 – Would Stronger Parties Mean Less Polarization?

This secret voting has an ancient history. In Britain in the 17th century, the House of Commons evolved it as a device to shield individual members from intimidation by King James I and King Charles I. When a difficult decision had to be taken, the House simply became a committee, the Speaker was excluded as a probable royal spy, and a vote was taken with no record kept. When the House of Representatives was organized in 1789, it took over this practice.
– William Shannon 1970 – The House Decides to Stop Being So Secretive

Information is the currency of Capital Hill, not dollars and not friends.
– Schoonmaker (Lobbyist) 1993 – It’s What Lobbyists Know

Government transparency is no cure-all and does not always have positive outcomes.
– Cucciniello et al 2017 – 25 Years of Transparency Research

The historic debate on the advantages and disadvantages of electronic voting in many ways hinged on transparency. Throughout the early debate in the 1914 and 1916 Congresses, members were concerned about the transparency of their votes and the consequences of public and lobbyist access to voting information prior to publication in the Congressional Record. Members were also concerned about lobbying by other members during votes, whether votes could be changed once they were cast but before voting time expired, and if changes would be published in the record...(Now) party leadership (uses) voting as a tactic to require other members to state a position on the record.
– Straus 2012 – The Rise of Roll Call Votes

Le secret est l'arme de la négociation.
– François de Callières 1716 – Fin du secret diplomatique?

NOTE: We found this quote in an excellent article by P. Sharp "Secret Diplomacy of Late Moderns" the following is from his piece "The classic texts are liberally sprinkled with expressions to the effect that secrecy is indispensable to the conduct of diplomatic relations. Callieres begins his discussion of communications between the ambassador and his sovereign with the following, 'Secrecy, being the very life of negotiations', or in some translations, 'Secrecy is the very soul of diplomacy' (Callieres 1983 [1715): 164; Freeman 1997: 264)."

Secrecy tends to induce bargaining and publicity to induce arguing, secrecy also improves the quality of whatever arguing that does take place behind closed doors.
– Jon Elster 2008 – Optimal Design of Constituent Assemblies

If the debates are public, perhaps because the need for diversity requires a large assembly that will not be able to maintain secrecy, one might in fact impose secret voting both to eliminate interest-based logrolling and to make the delegates unafraid of voting the wrong way on popular proposals. -- To exclude audience pressure that might bring delegates under the sway of emotion (vanity or fear), the assembly should debate in secret or, alternatively, vote in secret.
– Jon Elster 2008 – Optimal Design of Constituent Assemblies

Roll-call votes provide an obvious means by which party leaders can monitor compliance with their voting instructions...Legislative parties may use roll-call votes specifically to discipline their members. Roll-call votes allow legislative party leaders to monitor their members’ behavior, which is essential for accurately doling out reward or punishment.
– Carrubba, Gabel & Hug 2008 – Legislative Voting Behavior

Timmer 2017 – Ars Technica

We investigate…anti-corruption strategies (transparency and leader investment in the public good) and cultural background…These results suggest that a more nuanced approach to corruption is needed and that proposed panaceas, such as transparency, may actually be harmful in some contexts.
– Muthukrishna & Francois 2017 – Nature Magazine
How Anti-Corruption Strategies May Backfire

No Constitution would ever have been adopted by the convention if the debates had been public.
– James Madison 1830 – The Public Intellectual (full quote below)

James Madison 1830

It was...best for the convention for forming the Constitution to sit with closed doors, because opinions were so various and at first so crude that it was necessary they should be long debated before any uniform system of opinion could be formed. Meantime the minds of the members were changing, and much was to be gained by a yielding and accommodating spirit. Had the members committed themselves publicly at first, they would have afterwards supposed consistency required them to maintain their ground, whereas by secret discussion no man felt himself obliged to retain his opinions any longer than he was satisfied of their propriety and truth, and was open to the force of argument.
– James Madison 1830

Forcing the publication of votes in an institutional setting that relies on diplomatic practices can have deleterious effects on accountability: In some cases, the publication of votes might operate as a window-dressing device, prompting the public belief that ministers are accountable since they publish their votes, while real monitoring of the decision makers’ stances is not possible.
– Stephanie Novak 2015 – Secrecy and Publicity

As a final example, I shall cite the argument made by James D’Angelo that the combination of public voting in Congress and huge private contributions to election campaigns has undermined American democracy, by enabling lobbyists to verify that a representative they have funded votes the way they want.
– Jon Elster 2015 – Secrecy and Publicity

In addition to the democratic goods of the right to know and accountability, transparency in process has recently been advanced as a means to shore up citizen trust in government. Yet transparency may not have this effect. Several studies find no effects of transparency on trust and procedure acceptance. In one recent study, transparency in process did not produce increments of legitimacy significantly greater than transparency in rationale. The authors conclude that “a relatively modest reform focusing on transparency in rationale – such as a reason-giving requirement – may contribute to similar degrees of added legitimacy as more far-reaching transparency in process measures. Decision makers may improve the legitimacy of the procedure by simply outlining carefully afterward the reasons for the decisions taken behind closed doors.”
– Mark Warren & Jane Mansbridge 2013 (citing De Fine Licht)
– Political Negotiation

Increased transparency may actually make people less trusting than under conditions of less or no transparency. Full public insight into the decision-making process involves potential efficiency costs such as decision makers becoming less willing to agree on compromises, and it increases the risk that people become disappointed regarding the conditions under which decision making takes place.
– Jenny de Fine Licht 2014
– Magic Wand or Pandora´s Box? How transparency affects public perceptions of legitimacy

Third [organized interests, special interests and lobbyists] are better able to engage in surveillance of officeholders in order to encourage them to act in their favor. One of the most important things in democracy is information right. And one of the things you do when you organize is you can have people watching what officeholders are doing. Most people don’t have the time, they don’t have the resources to engage in surveillance so officeholders have a relatively free hand. But those who are organized are able to make sure that office holders know they’re watching, and therefore they’re much more likely to get their way.
– Steven Teles 2018 – The Captured Economy

Too much transparency might produce gridlock instead of policy success.
– Walter Oleszek 2011 – Lawmaking

Bruce Skarin 2014 – Why Transparency Gives Power To Wrong People

The duty to deliberate well may often be inconsistent with attempts to conduct policy deliberations on the plane of public opinion.
– Joseph Bessette 1994 – Mild Voice of Reason

The question arises (whether)...transparency is either conducive to more corruption or, at least, to corruption taking forms that are more detrimental to efficiency or equity.
– Breton 2007 – The Economics of Transparency in Politics

Jason Grumet 2014 – The Dark Side of Sunlight (pdf 2.5MBs)

Take for instance, the so-called “sunshine” laws which are being passed at every level of government, and against which no public figure seems bold enough to protest. They require that practically all meetings of all official bodies be open to public view. This sounds good, but in actuality it is utterly absurd. It’s no way to run anything, whether it be a school board, a university department, a trade union or a government agency. It penalizes candor and compromise and rewards aggressive “grandstanding.” Does anyone really believe that the Ford Motor Company and the United Automobile Worker could have reached an agreement if their negotiations were transmitted live on television? Or even if minutes of the meetings were kept? Similarly, the only reason Congress can function is because the committee system provides private (i.e., “secret”) occasions for negotiation that are distinct from the public forum where opinions are sharply expressed and debated.

It is easy to predict that these “sunshine” laws will be regularly evaded, even by the legislative bodies that enacted them. But they will be a perpetual nuisance, will provide opportunities for mischievous intervention by various publicity-hunting busybodies and, above all, will have exactly the opposite effect from that intended; instead of increasing public respect for the laws or the land, they will simply provide another instance of frequent nonobservance of these laws by public officials at all levels.
– Irving Kristol 1976 – Post-Watergate Morality

After 1971 it became relatively easy to demand a recorded vote on amendments... Such rules changes have complicated the lives of members and reinforced some of the more troubling aspects of the permanent campaign... Opposition researchers pore over members’ voting records in an attempt to find a vote contrary to – or a vote that can be (mis)construed as contrary to – the preferences of their constituents. Every vote a member casts must be considered a potential campaign issue. Indeed, some bills and amendments are offered only as a vehicle for forcing a vote that will provide a campaign issue.
– Norman Ornstein & Thomas Mann 2000 – Permanent Campaign

Norman Ornstein & Thomas Mann 2000 - The Permanent Campaign

It would be too difficult to put together a fiscally responsible bill if special interests could record how every member voted on every amendment. The temptation to vote yes on everything would be too great.
– Rep. Hatcher 1991 – CQ Quarterly - Behind Closed Doors

You said that what people want is to be included...And I’m fascinated by the drop in confidence across institutions. And one thing I see when I look at that polling is that the more open the institution has become, the more people actually are included in the institutions workings – things like Congress, the Presidency, increasingly all facets of American life have become more transparent – the more [the public’s confidence has] dropped. And then the more cloistered [the institution] is – the Supreme Court, the Army – the more it sort of works on the side, on its own, the more it has sustained trust. There seems to me to be a tension in American life right now, where we often want the institutions that govern us, that help shape the world we're a part of, to be more open to us. But when we get more into them, we don’t like it as much.
– Ezra Klein 1997 – Is Mitch Landrieu the “White, Southern Anti-Trump”?

Suffice it to say that there appears to be a fairly widespread consensus that the Sunshine Act is not achieving its principal – and obviously salutary – goal of enhancing public knowledge and understanding of agency decision-making. Instead, there is a considerable body of evidence in the academic literature, confirmed by the testimony of several agency officials, that the Act’s “open meeting” requirement curtails meaningful collective deliberation and substantive exchange of ideas among agency members. Rather than actual collective deliberation in public, agency members often use the open meeting merely to announce and explain their positions.
– Randolph May 1997 – Reforming the Sunshine Act

Nelson and Silberberg find a deference to special interests in open voting on defense bills, in which congressional voting patterns vary with the degree of anticipated scrutiny. They find evidence consistent with legislators being more likely to vote their personal ideologies on general defense bills than on narrowly focused bills dealing with particular weapons because in the latter case, there are identifiable beneficiaries who will monitor a Senator’s votes.
– Douglas Nelson & Eugene Silberberg 1987 – Ideology and Legislator Shirking

In environmental legislation, the final impact of a bill often depends on issues resolved through technical amendments. Downs’s theory (1957) of rational ignorance holds that citizens do not seek out detailed information on public policy because their votes individually have such a small probability of affecting political outcomes. Arnold (1990) notes the additional complication that constituents often face difficulties in linking up congressional actions with real-world outcomes. Both theories predict that Congress members may be less constrained by general constituent interests on amendment votes because these votes are less likely than final legislative votes to be covered in the media. ... In the case of technical amendments, affected parties may be more influential than on highly visible votes because the lack of media coverage translates into a lower probability that the vote will become a major campaign issue in future elections. This implies that voting to control pollution will be driven in part by the specific district-level costs and benefits of these measures, whereas voting on the final passage of a bill will be more driven by general constituent interests.
– James T. Hamilton 2005 – Regulation Through Revelation

Analysis of the votes on these amendments and final authorization also reveals a set of legislators who voted against the environmental position on all amendments and yet voted for the final bill. Because the amendment to provide toxic release information was voted on twice, the data also provide information on legislators who change positions after more attention is focused on a particular issue. These votes thus allow one to explore how legislator positions vary with the degree of scrutiny anticipated for a vote. The results indicate that legislator votes on policy instruments to control pollution are affected by the district-level incidence of the costs and benefits of these particular measures. These factors are less important in passage of the final bill, a symbolic vote influenced more strongly by the broader electoral constituency of a representative. In making contributions to Congress members, the PACs representing the affected chemical and petroleum industries appear to contribute more on the basis of a legislator’s stand on contested technical amendments than on a representative’s general environmental position or vote on the final passage of the bill. This provides further evidence of the role that business interests may play in the selection of instruments to control pollution.
– James T. Hamilton 2005 – Regulation Through Revelation

Openness is now regarded as one of the factors that has contributed to the seizing-up of democratic systems.
– Alisdair Roberts 2014 – Making Transparency Policies Work: The Critical Role of Trusted Intermediaries

Concern that providing initial deliberative views publicly, without sufficient thought and information, may harm the public interest by irresponsibly introducing uncertainty or confusion to industry or the general public; a desire on the part of members to speak with a uniform voice on matters of particular importance or to develop negotiating strategies which might be thwarted if debated publicly; reluctance of an agency member to embarrass another agency member, or to embarrass himself, through inadvertent, argumentative, or exaggerated statements; concern that an agency member's statements may be used against the agency in subsequent litigation, or misinterpreted or misunderstood by the public or the press, as for example, when the agency member is testing a position by "playing devil's advocate" or merely "thinking out loud"; and concerns that a member's statements may affect financial markets.
– Special Committee Report 1997 – Reforming the Sunshine Act

As recently as the early 1970s, congressional committees could easily retreat behind closed doors and members could vote on many bills anonymously, with only the final tallies reported. Federal advisory committees, too, could meet off the record. But...smoke-filled rooms, whatever their disadvantages, were good for brokering complex compromises in which nothing was settled until everything was settled; once gone, they turned out to be difficult to replace. In public, interest groups and grandstanding politicians can tear apart a compromise before it is halfway settled.
– Jonathan Rauch 2016 – How Politics Went Insane

Alexander Hamilton 1792

There isn’t much hard evidence that transparency reliably improves real-world decision-making or makes the public happier, and some evidence points to ill effects. One recent study finds that, in developing countries, transparency makes the public more fatalistic about corruption rather than stimulating outrage and action; the same dynamic of cynicism and numbness may apply in the United States, especially when transparency is coupled with paralysis. The public sees more of the sausage-making while getting less sausage. Ray La Raja finds that disclosure rules seem to induce small political donors to halve their giving. The point is not that sunshine rules and disclosure laws are always bad or even to deny that up to a point they are a public good in and of themselves; it is only that they can be counterproductive and that reformers’ dogmatic and often moralistic commitment to them needs a reality check.
– Jonathan Rauch 2016 – How Back Room Deals Can Strengthen Democracy

Transparency often exacerbates crises. Specifically, it seems to have the following effects: First, the media – a major factor in transmitting information made available by transparency – may have an incentive to pay more attention to belligerent statements than more subtle, conciliatory signals [and]… transparency may actually undermine behind-the-scenes efforts at negotiated settlements. [And]… a lack of transparency may actually help states avoid conflict.
– Finel & Lord 1999 – The Surprising Logic of Transparency

Consider the record of open diplomacy. It presents one salient lesson – especially since the close of World War II: it doesn’t work. Under the conditions of open diplomacy in the various conferences that have been held between the representatives of East and West, the Russians could not be anything but intransigent.
– Drew Middleton 1955 – Open Covenants Unopenly Arrived At

The “C-SPAN Effect” can encourage political posturing over genuine debate and a search for solutions. Using the C-SPAN model, more and more state and local governments are making more and more public hearings and meetings available over the public airwaves or over the Internet. Inviting this kind of public scrutiny would certainly seem to promote accountability. But it also can promote demagoguery over problem-solving, and it increases the chance that hearings or legislative sessions will devolve into partisan speechmaking. I can testify (anecdotally, to be sure) from my five years as a congressional staffer that there is a marked difference between the behavior of members of Congress in hearings depending on whether the cameras are on or not.
– Philip Joyce 2015 – The Dark Side of Government in the Sunshine

Transparency is seen as exacerbating crises by overwhelming diplomatic signals with the “noise” of domestic politics and confusing opponents about which domestic voices are authoritative expressions of state policy. The authors conclude that, surprisingly, transparency makes conflicts worse more often than not – a conclusion that casts doubt on one possible explanation of the democratic peace.
– Finel & Lord 1999 – The Surprising Logic of Transparency

Is American government too open? The short answer is yes in many instances. Determining the right amount of democratic transparency is surprisingly complicated, because public officials must govern effectively, not simply in the most democratically pure way. When we make naïve assumptions about citizen capacity, democratic opportunities to observe and participate can be captured by highly motivated and well-resourced interest groups and individuals.
– Bruce Cain (Stanford) 2016 – Is our Government too Open?

CQ Quarterly – Calmes 1987 – Few Complaints as Doors are Closed

Because of the adoption of rules changes governing voting on the floor, the number of recorded roll call votes each year roughly quadrupled. Members felt more and more harassed by various pressures of office, including less discretionary time, more pressure from single issue interest groups, more clamor for constituency service, more need to raise campaign money, and more subcommittee assignments that demanded their attention.
– Kingdon 1989 – Congressmen’s Voting Decisions

The impetus toward opening up the legislative process by such measures as recorded teller voting, open committee markup sessions, and less frequent closed rules may have increased the degree to which congressmen take constituents into account. But following from our earlier discussion of constituency elites, because the constituents who are paying attention are often the organized interests, these procedural changes may also have resulted in more attention to narrow interests, more parochial voting, and less ability or willingness to structure the legislative situation to look after collective interests. Stripping legislators of the ability to conceal votes may have increased their responsiveness to constituents at the same time that it has decreased their ability to rise above narrow or parochial constituency interests.
– Kingdon 1989 – Congressmen’s Voting Decisions

The infrequency of votes on which congressmen are recorded aye or nay was another feature of the parliamentary situation used to get off the hook, at least in the late 1960s. If the vote is not recorded, then the congressman is able to miss the vote or even to vote contrary to the way he votes on the record. One metropolitan congressman told me of his actions on the Whitten amendment to restrict HEW desegregation guidelines:

The bussing thing was hard. Bussing has created a lot of trouble in my city. People are mad about It. Damn good thing it wasn’t a roll call vote. I Just didn’t vote on the Whitten amendment, I sat it out. (Question: What if it had been on the record?) That would have been a very tough decision. I don’t know what I would have done. But a nonrecord vote made it easy for me.
– Kingdon 1989 – Congressmen’s Voting Decisions

Because the members of the United States House of Representatives vote without a secret ballot, it does not come as a surprise that those seeking political support, both from within the House and elsewhere, make direct contact with members of congress, who hold the power to cast votes on pressing political issues… The concept of “buying a vote” is an extremely arbitrary idea, and thus, there is really no way to deter people entirely from becoming involved in these actions, which are often viewed with contempt. “Buying a vote” in congress does not necessarily mean that money is being directly exchanged between the hands of lobbyists and congressmen, but can really take on many different forms. Although members of congress would not voluntarily admit to the fact that their votes may be influenced by factors other than the opinions of their constituents, when provided with opportunities by influential lobbyists, who can ultimately see which congressmen voted “Yea” or “Nay,” they may find themselves struggling to ignore such appealing bribes.
– Greenberg 2013 – Caught up in Corruption

Perhaps most jarring to modern minds was the rule providing “That no thing spoken in the House be printed, or otherwise published, or communicated without leave.” Like the intent of the resolutions rejecting individual roll call votes and permitting revotes, the secrecy rule was designed both to allow members to speak freely without fear of outside recrimination and to allay fears that might be spread should rumors be circulated on the basis of partial information.
– Vile 2005 – The Constitutional Convention

Concerned about how key negotiations are being pushed into the shadows, transparency campaigners and corporate lobbyists have formed an unlikely coalition in response.
– Cooper 2016 – Politico

The US has been the dominant country in the international system for some time. It has pursued a strategy of primacy in world politics since the 1940s, and its transparency policy is part of its long-term objective to forge and maintain a favorable international order. In effect, the aspiration behind America's support for greater transparency abroad is about maintaining an imbalance of power among the countries of the world, with America on top.
– James Marquardt 2011 – Transparency and American Primacy in World Politics

The consensus view of transparency is incomplete and, therefore, faulty because it represents transparency as a mechanism to transcend - and perhaps, once and for all, vanquish - power politics. Yet transparency can also be represented as part and parcel of power politics such that what it means, how it works, and the outcomes associated with it, for instance, are very much a function of the power dynamics that characterize world politics. That transparency is very much wrapped up with and therefore inseparable from power politics escapes serious attention.
– James Marquardt 2011 – Transparency and American Primacy in World Politics

America’s transparency initiatives and the resistance of others to them have exacerbated tensions and exaggerated each side’s security dilemma, thereby feeding into a spiral of hostility from which there is no easy exit.
– James Marquardt 2011 – Transparency and American Primacy in World Politics

The purpose of this book is to make the case for the inseparability of transparency and power...Transparency in international politics and American foreign policy is first and foremost a formation of power, which is most acutely evident in transparency’s surveillance function. Although it is represented by American policy elites as a liberal value, America’s efforts to institutionalize transparency function principally as a mechanism to keep a close eye on and discipline rivals.
– James Marquardt 2011 – Transparency and American Primacy in World Politics

Public officials routinely affirm their commitment to greater transparency in government and lament how the lack of it inhibits cooperation and generates fear and suspicion. Yet the reality is that their calls for greater transparency are politically motivated.
– James Marquardt 2011 – Transparency and American Primacy in World Politics

In writing a book skeptical of America’s pursuit of increased transparency in world politics, Marquardt injects needed arguments into debates and policies where far too many assume that transparency is an unalloyed good. This book shows how the United States has used transparency for strategic purposes, and not just for mutually beneficial agreements between states. Thus, the United States often encounters resistance to its almost uniformly pro-transparency policies.
– Dan Lindley (Notre Dame) 2011 – University of Notre Dame

Tip O’Neill launched internal live television of the House floor using House camera crews in March, 1977, and two years later gave the public access through C-SPAN. The Senate followed in 1986 using its own camera crews...We staff got used to having the backs of our heads on TV, and we cracked jokes about those staff who seemed to cross behind the chair too many times just to be seen from the front. I also started attending more meetings behind closed doors to reach agreements that would be reenacted before the cameras the next day. It’s a lot more work to do everything twice, and sometimes the reenactment on camera didn’t go according to the script, so the chair would hastily recess to repair the damage...I object to televising every utterance every minute of every closed door meeting because the meeting will be impaired...It may be a futile plea, but.. human beings need interaction to try out ideas and to gage support without being crucified for trying something that wasn’t adopted anyway. The more scrutiny beyond a reasonable amount, the less useful business gets done.
– House Staff Pete Davis 2010 – Cameras and Congress (Ezra Klein)

James D’Angelo 2016 – Twitter

State open meetings laws are preventing local officials from engaging citizens online for fear of inadvertently having what would be legally considered a meeting that would not meet other requirements such as public notice and public access. At the federal level, the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act is preventing the exchange of knowledge between the government and private sector. The purpose of the law was to prevent federal agencies from having back-room consultations with corporate executives and other entrenched sources, but the requirements for obtaining public input have grown so complex under the act that today the law is probably preventing federal agencies from getting the best knowledge.
– Josh Tauberer 2014 – Unintended Consequences of Transparency

Indeed, the Congress today is remarkably open, permeable to outside interests and opinion, and relatively unconstrained by autocratic committee and party leaders. Members if anything are hypersensitive to public opinion and unduly solicitous of intense opinions in the electorate, however ephemeral they may be. And committee and party leaders are responsive to majority sentiment among rank-and-file members. The Congress and its leaders are less equipped institutionally to cool the temporary passions of the public than ever before. The Framers of our system would be appalled to see how campaign finance practices, negative campaigning, orchestrated grass-roots lobbying and television and radio have made it more difficult for members of Congress to do what is politically unpopular in their districts but right for the country.
– Thomas Mann 1993 – Testimony - House Congressional Record

There are still some cases where closed mark-ups are better. We wouldn’t have had 150 amendments to the energy bill if the lobbyists hadn’t been there – we'd only have had 10 or 15.
– Rep Harley Staggers (D-WV) 1973 – Senate and House Open Up their Sessions

Opponents of the (transparency) rule warned that it would encourage members to show off for the press and allow lobbyists to intrude on deliberations...One staff member said the open mark-up sessions slowed the committee’s work when it was dealing with controversial legislation, because members became “more vocal” for the benefit of lobbyists – and for reporters who might quote them in the next day's papers. Lobbyists had been known to hand members notes with suggested amendments, he said, and “sometimes you even had applause and the chair had to bang for order.”
– CQ Quarterly 1973 – Senate and House Open Up their Sessions

Interested parties, not the general public, monitor the public sessions of agencies in order to influence outcomes.
– Bruce Cain (Stanford) 2016 – Is our Government too Open?

The hubris that as we get more educated and we know more we can handle more government responsibility, and when we fail we make possible the kind of polarization, the kind of capture by special interest, the capture by the most partisan of our society.
– Bruce Cain (Stanford) 2016 – Stanford talk: “Is our Government too Open?”

Contrary to the naive sirens of maximum democracy, greater transparency is as much a problem for good governance as it is a solution.
– Bruce Cain (Stanford) 2016 – Stanford talk: “Is our Government too Open?”

Today, the injunction of transparency has interfered in the unanimous conception of Western democracy, so that power and the decisions adopted by its holders are expected to become more and more important. As pointed out by G. Carcassonne, “it is by their level of transparency that the institutions will be judged above all, the performance and other conditions becoming only seconds. Only the fully transparent decision process will be considered satisfactory. What does it matter if he/she proves to be incapable of producing the slightest decision or produces only mediocre ones?” And the Carcassone warns: “If transparency is not reduced to what it is, a means, it is a threat, so that democracy has realized the dream of totalitarianism. The demand for excess transparency is no longer the quintessence of democracy, but rather its direct opposite”
– Chloé Mathieu 2017 – Émergence du mythe de la transparence, lobbying et responsabilité des élus

Gordon Wood 2003 – Founding Fathers and Public Opinion

Transparency is no longer primarily a vehicle of civil society, but is fueled and ruled by markets and states.
– Arthur P.J. Mol 2014 – The Lost Innocence of Transparency in Environmental Politics

Markets and states jostle to capture transparency arrangements for their own diverse ends, which are not necessarily aligned with assumed normative linkages between transparency, democracy and participation, as well as environmental reform...Transparency has “lost its innocence” as an arbiter of democratic and environmental gains.
– Arthur P.J. Mol 2014 – The Lost Innocence of Transparency in Environmental Politics

We focus on the dynamics of representation that emerged out of the 1970 Legislative Reorganization Act. On balance these moves toward transparency have had tremendously negative consequences. Consistent with the theory, increases in transparency were followed by increased narrow-interest lobbying, wasteful and pernicious legislative gamesmanship, increased partisanship, and more.
– David King (Harvard) 2017 – MPSA submission abstract

Committee deliberations were gradually opened up to public view, thus distributing information to all interested parties and facilitating the work of senator-interest group alliances...An increasing number of decisions were pushed to the Senate floor-resulting in more roll calls, more floor amendments offered and passed by noncommittee members and junior members (Sinclair 1985). While the committees certainly retained the larger share of influence, the balance between the committee rooms and the floor as arenas of decision making changed markedly... A major indicator of the changed balance was the commonplace exercise of the cherished senatorial right to talk – reflected in more “extended debate” on more subjects, more filibusters and threats of filibusters, and more cloture votes as efforts to cut off debate (Sinclair 1985). What was once regarded by most senators as an ultimate right to be invoked sparingly for the good of the community became an everyday weapon in the fight to gain a temporary advantage over one’s colleagues.
– Richard Fenno 1989 – The Senate through the Looking Glass - The Debate over Television

(By opening up the Senate to television) we are no doubt making the most far reaching change here that has been made in a long long time with reference to the possibility of the practices on this floor ... we are just opening up a Pandora’s box, and we can very easily carry on all the traditions and needs of the place without this.
– Senator John Stennis 1982 – Congressional Record, 3 Feb. 347

A trade-off between transparency and effectiveness of parliamentary legislative activity does exist: a sort of ‘transparency trap’ for legislatures, having its main point of reference in the impairment of legislative committees’ decision-making capacity. Indeed, increased levels of transparency favor an institutional move towards assigning an overarching importance to the most sensational declarations and to populist tones, which can have an immediate echo in the media. Such a move, however, needs to fit in with the activity of bodies such as legislative committees, specialized by subject matter, in charge of drafting or amending legislative acts, often dealing with highly technical issues and within which compromises and negotiations are essential.
– Cristina Fasone & Nicola Lupo 2015 – Transparency vs. Informality in Legislative Committees

The article argues that increasing levels of transparency can impair committees’ lawmaking performance, so also undermining the lawmaking ability of their legislatures. In three very different legislatures (the US House of Representatives, the Italian Chamber of Deputies and the European Parliament), both in institutional architecture and committees’ legislative powers, the growing transparency of their legislative activity has caused a shifting of the legislative decision-making away from committees or, even, outside the legislature.
– Cristina Fasone & Nicola Lupo 2015 – Transparency vs. Informality in Legislative Committees

As long as it is also believed that representatives should exercise a degree of independent judgement, then transparency can also have costs. I have argued that recent discussions of transparency in government have often overlooked this fact... With regard to polarization, while one might think that the institutional changes of the past forty years to promote openness in government should logically have reduced opinion polarization, the theoretical model presented here suggests why they may have actually had the opposite effect.
– David Stasavage 2006 – Polarization and Publicity

Though openness in government has obvious benefits, recent scholarship has devoted less attention to the possibility that it might also have costs. I use a formal framework to investigate the effect of public versus private decision making on opinion polarization. Existing work emphasizes that public debate helps to reduce polarization and promote consensus, but I argue that when debate takes place between representatives the opposite may be true.
– David Stasavage 2006 – Polarization and Publicity

Others have made attempts to discredit what is described as “secret diplomacy,” without reflecting that negotiation, if it is to be successful, cannot be carried oon upon the housetops...Nothing is to be gained by taking the world prematurely in the confidence of governments in regards to matters of high policy.
– Satow 2011 – A Guide to Diplomatic Practice

Rhode Island’s Claiborne Pell feared that “the presence of television will lead to more, longer, and less relevant speeches, to more posturing by Senators and to even less useful debate and efficient legislating than we have today.”… Russell Long from Louisiana also argued against the proposal, claiming that senators would posture in front of the cameras and that television would attract senators to the chamber floor when they should be doing the important work in committee meetings. Others feared that some senators, in an effort to compete with their House colleagues, would enlist the services of elocution coaches and even makeup experts. William Proxmire from Wisconsin, another opponent of televised proceedings argued that television would make if harder for Senators to reach compromises in private because “senators will find that the positions they took in their opening statements have been engraved in film.” “Television thrives on the dramatic,” Proxmire said, and “any additional incentives to confrontation can only mean more argument – and probably worse legislation.”
– David B. Frost 2017 – Classified - History of Secrecy

Secrecy, like openness, remains an essential prerequisite of self-governance. To be effective, even many of the most mundane aspects of democratic rule, from the development of policy alternatives to the selection of personnel, must often take place behind closed doors. To proceed always under the glare of the public would cripple deliberation and render government impotent. And when one turns to the most fundamental business of democratic governance, namely, self-preservation—carried out through conduct of foreign policy and the waging of war—the imperative of secrecy becomes critical, often a matter of survival. Even in times of peace, the formulation of foreign and defense policies is necessarily conducted in secret.
– Gabriel Schoenfeld 2011 – Necessary Secrets

Most important — and completely ignored by the champions of transparency — is the fact that even the most conscientious citizens, dedicated to following public affairs, have but one vote to weigh in on myriad issues. Most of the time, citizens cannot vote up or down any specific program. Exceptions include some local or state initiatives, such as bonds for schools or referenda on social issues like gay marriage. However, most of the time, especially at the national level, voters cannot be in favor of, say, much more funding for climate change, only a little more funding for ocean exploration, and less funding for bombers (or any such other combination). Rather, all they can do is vote up or down their representative, who, in turn, votes on many scores of programs.
– Amitaie Etzioni 2014 – Atlantic – Transparency is Overrated

Since the markup session involves the refinement of language, resolving conflict on concepts, and differences of opinion on the ultimate intent of a bill under consideration, the markup sessions are usually closed to the general public and to lobbyists. This has caused some consternation among lobbyists, since they think that the “give and take” inherent in these sessions should be subject to public scrutiny and to their influence...[But] those not familiar with the inner workings of the legislative process often misinterpret the markup sessions as “closed” sessions in the sense of secret deliberations. All members of Congress know that the markup session is deliberation in its finest form.
– Curtis & Westerfield 1992 – Congressional Intent

Almost everyone connected with the process agrees the legislation being written would be even more riddled with gifts to special interests if it were being done in public. Supporters of closed sessions argue that it speeds the process since members don’t feel as much need to posture on issues for an audience and that it provides protection from lobbyists for special interests.
– Donosky 1985 – Tax Reform Behind Closed Doors

With the media, ordinary citizens, and campaign contributors watching, they must take care to protect their electoral flanks. Increasingly, committees have resorted to “executive” or “informal” sessions, held prior to official meetings, where the members can talk freely and develop compromises without the intrusive presence of outsiders. In formal meetings legislators may do little more than ratify agreements reached in private. Rep. Bill Frenzel (R-Minn.), who began his legislative service as a self-proclaimed “open meeting freak,” observed that “since our meetings have been closed, our work has been less flawed... and our consensuses much stronger. I think it’s the only way to fly.” The presence of lobbyists and administrative officials at public sessions – where they can monitor members’ behavior, offer the texts of amendments, and notify their employers when and where to apply pressure – may have made it more difficult for committees to act decisively, to be responsible.

The rise of single-interest groups and PACs during the reform era may have made legislators less willing to risk offending any potentially decisive electoral force. Prudent lawmakers may feel obliged to resist party or presidential calls for support. Previously, members could affirm their support undetected, in the quiet of the committee room, or in a standing or teller vote on the floor, but at present there are dangers in doing so. Members may be loath to act at all, preferring to entrench themselves as ombudsmen and claiming credit for serving the district; or they may limit their policy making to “position taking” – choosing sides on substantive questions only when it is safe to do so. They may even obfuscate their stands to minimize the danger of being caught on the wrong side of a policy issue that turns out to be controversial.
– Larry Rieselbach 1994 – Congressional Reform

There are times, perhaps, when issues are better resolved in a more private and orderly environment than in the committee room open to the media and the public. This is accomplished, however, through “executive sessions” of the full committee, and not with lobbyists approaching congressmen one by one, separate and apart. Quiet diplomacy and compromise are hard to accomplish in the glare of news cameras and when parties to the hearing are competing for the public spotlight.
– Curtis & Westerfield 1992 – Congressional Intent

With the waning of the civil rights and anti-war movements at the beginning of the 1970s, Common Cause provided an avenue for continued political participation by affluent whites, many of whom had been active in the presidential campaigns of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy in 1968, and of George McGovern in 1972. Although a part, and a significantly influential part, of the Democratic constituency, the views of Common Cause activists epitomize elite distrust of a basic element of politics, and of Democratic politics in particular: the bartering and trading of votes, favors, jobs, and other benefits, often behind closed doors, which make the negotiation and resolution of much larger issues possible, facilitating those compromises essential to the operation of government, particularly in the pluralistic, non-ideological politics of the United States.
– Edsall 1984 – The New Politics of Inequality

The new aim was to clean up government, to impose a system of ethical norms on elected officials,... to insure public access to official proceedings...These changes unquestionably increased public access to both the legislative and executive branches of government, although it is curious to note that there are still no representatives of the general-interest press and television at the overwhelming majority of congressional committee sessions. Instead, public access to these meetings is used primarily by lobbyists and publications catering to special-interest groups. Similarly, the Freedom of Information Act is used far more by corporations seeking to gain an advantage over, or information about, competitors than for the disclosure of governmental activity to the general public. Along the same lines, campaign reforms have made information on sources of political financial support more accessible, but these reforms have given institutional legitimacy to many of the practices reformers were struggling to restrict.
– Edsall 1984 – The New Politics of Inequality

During the past generation many of the gatekeepers of the old political order were swept aside. The governmental process became more permeable as political institutions and processes became increasingly open to popular participation and increasingly subject to popular influence. The 1960s protesters demanded “power to the people,” and apparently they got it. The great irony, then, is that after this explosion of openness and the transfer of power to the people, turnout in elections fell and trust in government plummeted. Against all natural expectations, Americans liked their government better, trusted their leaders more, and voted in higher numbers in the bad old days when party bosses chose nominees in smoke-filled rooms; when several dozen old White men (mostly Southerners) ran Congress; when it was more difficult to get a hearing in court; when legislatures, agencies, city councils, and local boards made decisions behind closed doors; when big business, big labor, and big agriculture dominated the interest group universe; and when politicians didn’t have the tools to figure out what their constituents wanted. Why?
– Fiorina 2011 – Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation

Overall, our review [of transparency and accountability studies] found that much of the current evidence relies on untested normative, positivist assumptions and under-specified relationships between mechanisms and outcomes. Much of the empirical work reviewed is based on poorly articulated, normatively-inspired ‘mixes’, that draw unevenly from the concepts of transparency, accountability, good governance and empowerment. Virtually none of the literature gathered explores possible risks or documents negative effects or arising from TAIs, although some begins to note these at an anecdotal or speculative level.
– Gaventa & McGee 2011 – Impact of Transparency & Accountability (evidence)

Warren & Mansbridge 2013 – Negotiating Agreement

Nothing in the Constitution requires public sessions of Congress, let alone public hearings of its committees or public votes. In fact, the Constitution makes no mention of committees at all. One of the first decisions of the First Continental Congress in September of 1774 was to keep its proceedings secret, the custom of the colonial assemblies. Likewise, the Constitutional Convention’s proceedings in 1787 were secret. However, one of the rules proposed for the Convention would have permitted any member to call for the yeas and nays on any matter voted and the printing in the minutes of the names for and against. According to James Madison’s notes, Rufus King of Massachusetts objected to the rule on grounds that it was unnecessary since acts of the Convention were not binding on constituents. Moreover, he argued that such a record of votes would be “improper as changes of opinion would be frequent in the course of the business and would fill the minutes with contradictions.” George Mason seconded King’s objection. A record of the opinion of members “would be an obstacle to a change of them on conviction,” and, when promulgated in the future, “must furnish handles to the adversaries of the Result of the Meeting.” The rule was subsequently dropped by unanimous consent.
– Donald Wolfensburger 2000 – Congress and the People

It is expected our doors will be shut, and communications upon the business of the Convention be forbidden during its sitting. This, I think, myself, a proper precaution to prevent mistakes and misrepresentation until the business shall have been completed, when the whole may have a very different complexion from, that in which the several crude and undigested parts might, in their first shape, appear if submitted to the public eye.
– George Mason 1789 – The Constitutional Convention

The conventional wisdom among judges, legislators, the public — and especially the media — is that “open meetings” are a good thing. As a generalization, it is certainly a superficially attractive proposition. On closer examination...open meetings laws of the federal government and forty-eight other states, have only made the inherent problems worse. To capture all discussions merely because they are called deliberations is an impossibility. To try to do so only guarantees that fewer discussions and deliberations will take place, and that fewer wise decisions will be made.
– Nicholas Johnson 1994 – Open Meetings and Close Minds

Newspapers and television corporations and their litigation and lobbying organizations are the most vigorous proponents of openness of meetings unless, of course, it is the media’s records or meetings that are at stake.
– Nicholas Johnson 2994 – Open Meetings and Close Minds

Julian Zelizer 1998 – Taxing America

Lobbyists...have a kind of nuisance impact. They can make life somewhat unpleasant for officials who do not go along with them: It is embarrassing to vote against someone who is watching.
– Lester Milbrath 1963 - The Washington Lobbyists

To appreciate one of the central virtues of secret balloting, consider the fact that in a number of organizations, the leadership, for obvious reasons, insists that the preferences and opinions of the rank and file be revealed through a hand count instead of a secret ballot. Transparency, in that case, is of way of controlling the membership.
– Albert Breton 2007 – The Economics of Transparency in Politics

Leaders and members regularly set up roll-call (transparent) votes in full knowledge that these votes will have no effect on policy outcomes, but they nevertheless stage them for messaging purposes – that is, to define the differences between the parties in hopes of making their party look more attractive to voters or key constituencies than the opposition. (intentionally driving partisanship)
– Frances Lee 2016 – Insecure Majorities

A number of factors may have contributed to the explosion of corporate lobbying. An onslaught of environmental and consumer regulations in the late 1960s and early 1970s provoked an antiregulatory backlash, and the authorization of political action committees in 1974 encouraged business to take sides in elections. But the most compelling explanation is the revolution in transparency that unfolded at the same time. Before the sunshine reforms, lobbyists could rarely tell for sure whether their targets were voting as intended. That lack of assurance proved crucial to keeping special interests on the back foot. During the deliberations that led to the Tax Reform Act of 1969, for example, members of Congress approved all kinds of special giveaways in open session, but when the conference committee met behind closed doors to draft the final language, it quietly stripped the pork away, dashing the hopes of scores of special interest groups. As the political scientist Lester Milbrath had noted in the early 1960s, “A lobbyist who thinks about using bribery . . . has no assurance that the bribed officials will stay bought.”
– James D’Angelo & Brent Ranalli 2019
The Dark Side of Sunlight (Foreign Affairs Magazine)

I feel the committee produces a better bill behind closed doors. There is less posturing, less playing to the audiences. We are able to move much more quickly and I think, in the end, we do a better job.
– Rep. Gradison 1985 – Rewriting Tax Code (Fessler)

With a closed markup you can always say to lobbyists or constituents that you fought like a tiger for their position and asked for a record vote, but not enough members raised their hands. Members almost feel obligated to demand a record vote in public, and then you have members voting in a way they don’t really want.
– Rep. Don Pease 1985 – Rewriting Tax Code (Fessler)

Perhaps it is not then surprising that public distrust has grown in the very years in which openness and transparency have been so avidly pursued.
– Onora O’Neill 2002 – A Question of Trust (Reith Lectures)

There is little reason to think that transparency and openness are going to increase trust. Transparency can encourage people to be less honest, so increasing deception and reducing reasons for trust: those who know that everything they say or write is to be made public may massage the truth… Demands for universal transparency are likely to encourage the evasions, hypocrisies and half-truths that we usually refer to as ‘political correctness’, but which might more forthrightly be called either self-censorship or deception.
– Onora O’Neill 2002 – A Question of Trust (Reith Lectures)

My bottom line is that closed mark-ups can often produce better legislation and therefore serve the public interest.
– Rep Don Pease 1984 – Opening up Congress

Historically, assemblies have not always granted publicity of their debates. They have often denied the public access to their proceedings and also used secret voting to allow their members to shield themselves from the public, from the executive, or from the political parties to which they belong.
– Jon Elster 2013 – Securities Against Misrule

Trying to make government more accountable has backfired...And yet, when government seems to fail, Americans habitually resort to the same solutions: more process, more transparency, more appeals to courts. Each dose of this medicine leaves government more sluggish. To counter the ensuing disappointment, reformers urge yet another dose. After Speaker Tip O’Neill retired from Congress, in 1987, an interviewer asked him how the House of Representatives had changed over his 35 years of service. He memorably answered, “The people are better. The results are worse.” His answer might be generalized across the American system of government: the process is better (at least as better is conventionally defined: more transparent, more participatory), but the results are worse.
– David Frum 2014 – The Transparency Trap

Reformers keep trying to eliminate backroom wheeling and dealing from American governance. What they end up doing instead is eliminating governance itself, not just in the White House but in Congress, too.
– David Frum 2014 – The Transparency Trap

Procedures such as voice votes or closed committee meetings which screened legislators from public scrutiny...these defenses against pressure-group power have been weakened or have disappeared.
– Graham Wilson 1981 – Interest Groups in the United States

CQ 2013 – How Congress Works

*NOTE: In 1990, Mitchell passed the most significant environmental legislation since the late 1960s. And in order to do it, he reversed the notions of the 1970s transparency.

During the 1980s there was some retreat from the [sunshine] reforms, including votes by a number of key panels to close their doors during consideration of major legislation. Votes to close committees had to be conducted in open session by a roll call with a quorum present. The House Ways and Means Committee, perhaps the most heavily lobbied committee in the House, chose to close its doors to write such landmark legislation as a historic tax-overhaul bill in 1985 and trade and catastrophic illness insurance bills in 1987. Ways and Means chair Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., argued: “It’s just difficult to legislate. I'm not ashamed about closed doors. We want to get the product out.” Other panels – notably House Appropriations subcommittees – also met privately to draft legislation. Sometimes committees’ decisions were made by small groups of members behind the scenes and then ratified in open session. Defenders of closed sessions argued that committee members were more candid, markups more expeditious, and better laws written away from lobbyists’ glare.
– CQ 2013 – How Congress Works

Most of the studies of the Congress of the 1950s emphasized additional techniques, which the legislator could use to avoid unwelcome pressure from interest groups. Many of these turned on adroit use of Congressional procedure. Rather than oppose an interest group publicly, thus encouraging retaliation, legislators could have a ‘voice vote’ in which the position of each individual would not be recorded. Legislators could vote for a general position favored by interest groups, but could support amendments undermining the bill. Legislators could acquiesce in the adoption of conference-committee reports which were worded in such a way that they electively sabotaged the bill they supposedly approved.
– Graham Wilson 1981 – Interest Groups in the United States

There is a type of transparency project that should raise more questions than it has – in particular, projects…such as the ones (these are the really sexy innovations for the movement) to make it trivially easy to track every possible source of influence on a member of Congress, mapped against every single vote that the member has made. These projects assume that they are seeking an obvious good. No doubt they will have a profound effect. But will the effect of these projects – at least on their own, unqualified or unrestrained by other considerations – really be for the good? Do we really want the world that they righteously envisage?
– Lawrence Lessig 2009 – Against Transparency

Transparency has a dark side that, ironically, has everything to do with a lack of mystery, shadow, and nuance. Behind the apparent accessibility of knowledge lies the disappearance of privacy, homogenization, and the collapse of trust. The anxiety to accumulate ever more information does not necessarily produce more knowledge or faith. Technology creates the illusion of total containment and the constant monitoring of information, but what we lack is adequate interpretation of the information.
– Byung-Chul Han 2015 – The Transparency Society

*NOTE: Han's current work focuses on transparency as a cultural norm created by neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic. According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust.

Open meetings, open rules, and unlimited recorded votes seemed like good ideas when they were proposed, and they were backed by Common Cause and others who sought to reduce the power of special interests. Unfortunately, these reforms were based on a faulty understanding of the mechanisms that allow for citizens’ control. We now know that open meetings filled with lobbyists, and recorded votes, on scores of particularistic amendments, serve to increase the powers of special interests, not to diminish them.
– Douglas Arnold 1990 (Princeton) – The Logic of Congressional Action

Examples abound of congressional action to serve [special interests] when both conditions [of transparency] are satisfied. In 1980 soft drink bottlers obtained an antitrust exception so that they could have exclusive franchises in specific geographic areas, thus eliminating any competition from alternative suppliers of identical soft drinks. They did so by forcing legislators to stand up and be counted on a bill that was highly salient to local bottlers and yet not even potentially salient to consumers. Members of both House and Senate supported the bottlers overwhelmingly (377 to 34, and 89 to 3). In 1982 used car dealers obtained an exemption from regulation by the Federal Trade Commission by forcing roll-call votes in both House and Senate. Most legislators sided with used car dealers, who were both attentive to congressional action and large financial contributors, rather than with used car purchasers, who were unaware of what was happening and who could hardly be roused by an issue with such indirect effects. Both House and Senate supported the auto dealers (286 to 133, and 69 to 22). The story of the 1981 All Savers Certificate shows a similar deference to attentive publics. Once again the issue was very important to savings banks, but not potentially salient to ordinary voters.
– Douglas Arnold 1990 (Princeton) – The Logic of Congressional Action

The reason for the institutional members generating different emotions in the public may in part be found in the institutions themselves. Congress does its work in the open. The public sees almost all of the dirty laundry – both the perceived inefficiency (such as the disagreements, the bickering, the haggling, the obstructions put before the president) and the perceived inequity (such as the alleged influence of special interests, and of selfish concerns on the part of members themselves – scandals, perquisites, and so on). The public feels angry and disgusted at what it sees. The work of the Supreme Court, on the other hand, is done behind closed doors. The media occasionally report on a Supreme Court decision, but even then the public hears only the final summary judgment. What went on in private or even in the courtroom itself remains a mystery to all but a few Americans. This secretive and mysterious process is more likely to generate feelings of uneasiness and fear than anger and disgust. People are not sure what the Supreme Court is doing or what it will do next, but they know what Congress will do next, and they feel angry and disgusted about the whole thing. So the processes of the separate institutions may in fact feed into the emotional reactions people have toward the institutional membership– Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 1995 – Congress as Public Enemy

              AN ENEMY BECAUSE IT IS PUBLIC
On the basis of both our focus-group sessions and the survey responses, we believe an important element of distaste for Congress either has been missed altogether or at least under emphasized by previous investigators. To wit: Congress embodies practically everything Americans dislike about politics. It is large and therefore ponderous; it operates in a presidential system and is therefore independent and powerful; it is open and therefore disputes are played out for all to see; it is based on compromise and therefore reminds people of the disturbing fact that most issues do nor have right answers. Much of what the public dislikes about Congress is endemic to what a legislature is. Its perceived inefficiencies and inequities are there for all to see.

Focus-group participants and survey respondents are disgusted by what they perceive to be undue interest-group influence in Congress. “Why doesn’t Congress represent real people?” participants would ask. Again, part of Congress’s problem is that perceived inequities are played out in public. People frequently see stories of members of Congress being too cozy with special interests, and they find such behavior disgusting. Moreover, when Congress does take action it is seldom fast. Madison believed this was good. He saw the Senate especially as protecting the people from themselves (Madison, 1964) and their oscillating moods and whims. But the public does not like overly deliberate politics. They would like to see something done quickly when in fact legislatures - particularly legislatures like the U.S. Congress - are not well-equipped for rapid action. Viewed in this context, it should be less than a shock that the public does not like Congress. The public prefers some degree of certainty, and when there is not certainty the public wants to believe that disputes take place on the merits of the issues.

Thus, the very openness of the legislative process, which might otherwise be thought to endear Congress to the people, is much more likely to have the opposite effect. Nasty, visible disputes within the executive branch are fairly rare, and interest-group activity there is seldom reported. Occasionally, cabinet rivalries and leaked position papers give the general public a glimpse of maneuverings at the highest policy levels of the presidency, but such instances are infrequent. For the most part, proposals flow from the White House with apparent unanimity from those involved. Dissenters remain quiet or fall in line after the decision is made, in accord with the structure of a hierarchically organized entity. And the Supreme Court, of course, has been artful at camouflaging its disputes. The Court’s “bickering” takes place behind carefully closed doors. Decisions, even when divided, are announced cleanly, and the public remains largely unaware of dissenting opinions. No open disputes, visible partisan stances, or transparent interest-group machinations can be seen. Decisions are presented as final products, not works in progress.

The public, for the most part, does not like the partisan debates, competing interests, and compromises that many close observers of modem democratic politics believe are unavoidable. Congress is the institution in which these distasteful elements of politics are most readily visible. Thus, while Congress is sometimes viewed by the public as an enemy, we wish to call attention to the fact that it is often viewed as an enemy because it is so public.
– Hibbing & Thiess-Morse 1995 – Congress as Public Enemy

The alternative route for those who seek to increase citizens’ control of government is to reform congressional procedures...so that legislators are responsive to general interests as well as group interests. Although this was the intent of those who reformed procedures in the 1970s, many of the reforms have had the opposite effect. Reformers demanded that all committee meetings must be open, but all this openness has actually allowed narrowly based interest groups to monitor legislators more closely and has thereby made legislators more responsive to group interests. Reformers demanded an end to the closed rule because it was antidemocratic, but most of the amendments proposed without benefit of the rule have been particularistic proposals that serve group interests. Reformers demanded an end to secret, unrecorded votes, but the increased reliance on recorded votes has actually made it easier for narrow groups to hold legislators accountable because most of these votes are on particularistic amendments.
– Arnold 1990 – The Logic of Congressional Action

Longstreth 1983 – Washington Post
The Government-in-the-Sunshine Act isn’t working

Obey, in an interview, blamed much of the push for secrecy on lobbyists. “You have a number of members frustrated because things they have said or done in open markups have been garbled by trade association newsletters and lobby groups,” he said. “Also, you have a feeling that the lobby groups in this country have become so single-minded and so intense that maybe it’s better to operate behind closed doors. You sometimes wonder who is having more influence – the lobbyists or the members.”
– Rep. David Obey D-Wi 1979 – Conference Committees Open Doors (CQ)

The typical American solution to perceived government dysfunction has been to try to expand democratic participation and transparency. Almost all of these reforms failed in their objectives of creating higher levels of accountable government. The reason is that democratic publics are not in fact able by background or temperament to make large numbers of complex public policy choices; what has filled the void are well-organized groups of activists who are unrepresentative of the public as a whole. The obvious solution to this problem would be to roll back some of the would-be democratizing reforms, but no one dares suggest that what the country needs is a bit less participation and transparency.
– Francis Fukuyama 2014 – Political Order and Political Decay

Francis Fukuyama 2014 – Political Order and Political Decay

Rolling television coverage of Congress has been linked by many to the decline of deliberation in that body. Rather than debating with colleagues, members of Congress are in fact addressing activist audiences but in the media ether. One former senator I know, who has decried the deterioration of comity in Congress, noted that the most pleasurable moments of his career were spent on the intelligence committee, whose secrecy allowed members to say for once what they honestly believed.
– Francis Fukuyama 2015 – The Limits of Transparency

Jacob Straus 2012 – The Rise of Roll Call Votes (pdf 3.3MB)

For information to be accurate and accessible, transparency requires the kind of regulation that proponents claim it is supposed to replace.
– Amitai Etzioni 2014 – Transparency is Overrated

Transparency provides users with the illusion of openness while actually serving to obfuscate.
– Amitai Etzioni 2014 – Transparency is Overrated

Sometimes the many calls you hear for more transparency in the workings of government may also be wrong...Negotiations cannot be public, as the parties will not be able to talk freely and frankly enough to do the work necessary to reach an integrative solution.
– Jane Mansbridge 2010 – Against Accountability

Legislative secrecy…has been part of the policymaking process from Congress’s very beginning, and it remains an integral aspect of the lawmaking process. The Framers – who drafted the U.S. Constitution in closed meetings – even included a secrecy provision in that document. Article I, Section 5, states, “Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy.” Moreover, when the first Senators gathered in New York for their first session [in 1789], they seemed to take it for granted that they would meet behind closed doors.
– Walter Oleszek 2011 – Secrecy and Transparency

Transparency theory’s flaws result from a simplistic model of linear communication that assumes that information, once set free from the state that creates it, will produce an informed, engaged public that will hold officials accountable. To the extent that this model fails to describe accurately the state, government information, and the public, as well as the communications process of which they are component parts, it provides a flawed basis for open government laws.
– Mark Fenster 2006 – The Opacity of Transparency

Checking the ways other people vote is likely to be driven by private concerns, not by a concern for the common good. Vote checking, then, is likely to be performed for the wrong reasons.
– Manin 2015 – Secrecy and Publicity

Committees now open their proceedings to the public. Many are televised. All of this allows lobbyists to keep a close eye on events—and to confirm that the politicians to whom they have contributed deliver value. In short, in the name of “reform,” Americans over the past half century have weakened political authority. Instead of yielding more accountability, however, these reforms have yielded more lobbying, more expense, more delay, and more indecision.
– David Frum 2014 – The Transparency Trap

Payne 1991 – Culture of Spending

Since the 1960's...legislatures, parties and other administrative agencies have sought to make their workings more transparent and responsive to the popular will. Yet the unintended consequence of this “democratization of democracy” is that all these institutions have become prey to the activities of professional lobbyists. Open committee meetings in Congress; primary elections to select delegates to national political conventions; changes to the system of campaign funding; the rise of referendums in state and municipal politics -- together, these well-intentioned innovations have tended to debase the political process.
– Niall Ferguson 2003 – Overdoing Democracy (NYTimes)

Many of us have a reflexive belief that open political processes are more accountable, but we don’t often ask “accountable to who”? It’s easy to assume that the accountability is to a broader public interest. But in practice, transparency means that focused special interests can keep tabs on each proposal. If the special interests object, they can whip up a storm of protests. They also can threaten attempts at compromise, and push instead toward holding hard lines and party lines. Greater openness means a greater ability to monitor, to pressure, and to punish possible and perceived deviations.
– Timothy Taylor 2019 – When Special Interests Play in the Sunlight

Human experience teaches us that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interest to the detriment of the decision-making process.
– Justice Waren Burger 1974 – Supreme Court

Members of Congress would have to determine whether the advantages of openness outweigh those of secrecy. Lest anyone think that opening formal meetings of any type will place the entire legislative process out in the open, the experience of committees must be reviewed. After committees opened their doors to the public, much of the key decision making occurred in the hallways, in the anterooms, and at pre-meeting meetings. There is a limit to “sunshine” procedures. Certain issues must be discussed in private. The legislative process would grind to a halt if everything had to be done in public. Just as there is a legitimate “private space” in each of our lives, public officials must be allowed to have some private space to develop policy agreements.
– Stephen Frantzich & John Sullivan 1996 – The C-SPAN Revolution

I think TV is the biggest evil that has come to the House. Speaker O’Neill predicted what would happen...We now have four hundred and thirty-five potential stars of daytime television who are acutely aware that there are cameras in the chamber. They use them to get messages out. They plan for sound bites, things that can be quickly snatched by the evening news. It’s created a nastiness and a level of personal attack that was unheard of.
– Donnald Anderson – Kessler 1997 (Inside Congress)

Indeed, in the days when Appropriations committees saw their mission as cutting spending rather than maximizing it, appropriators carried out virtually all of their activities, including hearings, behind closed doors... William Natcher, D-Ky., closed his markups after taking over the Labor-HHS Subcommittee in 1979, arguing that it would be too difficult to put together a fiscally responsible bill if special interests could record how every member voted on every amendment. The temptation to vote yes on everything would be too great.
– George Hager 1991 – Behind Closed Doors (CQ Magazine)

A huge percentage of time is spent on how to use the political process to create a vote that will embarrass the other side. You basically have people working to make each other look as bad and stupid as possible.
– Rep Eric Fingerhut – Kessler 1997 (Inside Congress)

Disclosure also induces policymakers to distort the process of information gathering and evaluation. In contrast, when no information can be disclosed, the government has no incentive to manipulate information. Secrecy is therefore effective at protecting the integrity of the decision-making process.
– Patacconi & Vikander 2013 – Misuse of Info for Public Debate

Members…at one time did not have to choose between the goals of maximizing reelection prospects and legislating in the national interest, the new transparency and interest group attentiveness to voting records, combined with the rewards of campaign contributions for acceptable conduct, forced that choice more and more often.
– Donald Wolfensberger 2012 – Getting Back to Legislating

In some cases, members may request a roll call vote in an effort ot put a political opponent on the record. More often than not, this happens for measures that are politically unpopular for the opposition party. In making these requests (often requests from lobbyists), members are using the electronic voting system to potentially score political points or stop legislation they are opposed to...these measures are often designed to ‘kill’ the underlying piece of legislation if they are adopted.
– Jacob Straus 2012 – The Rise of Roll Call Votes

Probably the most significant amendment relating to the legislative procedure of the House adopted during debate on the 1970 Act (and nearly the only provision of the measure to generate any notable public interest) was the proposal – sponsored by 182 members – to record House members’ names on teller votes, either by House tally clerks or electronic equipment, with publication of the voting in the Congressional Record as has been done with roll-call votes. Under the prior procedure, dating back to early British parliamentary practice, only the total votes on each side of a teller vote, which takes place in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, were published. Since any amendment defeated while the House sits in Committee of the Whole cannot be the subject of a later record vote when the Committee rises, members could vote anonymously to defeat an amendment they might feel obligated to support if their position were to be made public. Most amendments to legislation adopted in the House are decided by voice, standing, or teller votes, all – until the 1970 act – unrecorded. With recordation of teller votes, the number of members voting and thus participating in the amending process has been increased, and the outcome of the vote occasionally changed.
– Bruce Hopkins 1972 – Congressional Reform: Toward a Modern Congress

Drew Middleton 1955 – Open Covenants Unopenly Arrived At

One principle surely is that the Government’s case for a measure of secrecy is not altogether frivolous or self‑serving. “The Federalist” is generally worth consulting on these matters; and its authors clearly specified two fields where secrecy seemed to them essential. The first was diplomatic negotiation: “It seldom happens in the negotiation of treaties, of whatever nature, but that perfect secrecy and immediate dispatch are sometimes requisite.” Woodrow Wilson, it is true, later appeared to repudiate this doctrine when he said that “diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view” and called for “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.” Before World War I the French Assembly did not know the secret clauses of the Franco‑Russian alliance; nor did the British Foreign Secretary inform even his own Cabinet of the military understandings between the British and French General Staffs. This is what Wilson hoped to abolish.

But, as he himself made clear at Versailles, he really meant by “diplomacy” not the processes but the results of negotiation. In practice he favored plenty of talk out of “the public view” but no concealment of results—i.e., open covenants secretly arrived at. As for the negotiating process, Jules Cambon, who was French Ambassador to Berlin before World War I and whom that acute student of diplomacy Harold Nicolson regarded as perhaps the best professional of the century, was only mildly exaggerating when he wrote, “The day secrecy is abolished, negotiation of any kind will become impossible.” His recent trans‑Atlantic shuttling suggests that Henry Kissinger would agree. Whether blowing the secrecy destroys his capability for future private negotiations is a problem that one hopes Mr. Kissinger has pondered.

A second field noted in “The Federalist” as requiring secrecy was that of intelligence: “There are cases where the most useful intelligence may be obtained, if the persons possessing it can be relieved from apprehensions of discovery.” Contemplation of these two fields led “The Federalist” to conclude: “So often and so essentially have we heretofore suffered from the want of secrecy and dispatch, that the Constitution would have been inexcusably defective, if no attention had been paid to those objects.” In such terms “The Federalist” vindicated the right of the executive branch to conduct negotiations and, by inference, intelligence operations, without any immediate obligation to supply Congress or the people the detail of what it was doing. So from the start the American Government has been into secrecy...You can’t run a Government if every important secret is going to be handed over to the press.
– Arthur Schesinger Jr. 1972 – The Secrecy Dilemma

Official plans and decisions which, if prematurely disclosed, would lead to speculation in lands or commodities, preemptive buying, private enrichment and higher governmental costs.
– Arthur Schesinger Jr. 1972 – The Secrecy Dilemma

Senator Russel Long argued that “every senator is going to change his pattern of conduct if the Senate is on television” (Congressional Record 15 April 1982, 3582). His prediction was that individual senators, given their ambitious nature and their political goals, would be more attracted than ever to the opportunities for garnering favorable publicity on the Senate floor. “There is no way, in my judgment, and I am positive I am right about his,” he argued, “that we can put the Senate of the United States on live television without greatly increasing the amount of time that Senators are going to spend making speeches here in the U.S. Senate” (Congressional Record 2 Feb. 1982, 279). “Every Senator is a prima donna in one degree or another,” he told the Rules Committee, “and everyone of them is going to be tempted to make himself a speech for the folks back home .... And for those who are motivated to take an interest in being President of the United States, hoping lightning might strike them some day [and he estimated 61 such senators] what better opportunity to appear just as often as possible, say something that they think would have some appeal to people across the country” (U.S. Senate 1981, 146). The scenario he saw was one of ever increasing individualism. More political speechmaking (grandstanding), he argued, would diminish the Senate’s capacity to conduct its normal legislative business. “The people don’t send us here to wage a campaign for our reelection or wage a campaign for some other office,” he said. “They elect us here and send us to legislate and pass laws that are in their interest” (U.S. Senate 1981, 76)... Long also predicted more publicity inspired amendments and roll calls ( Congressional Record, 3 Feb. 1982, 345). He further predicted that debate would be less than ever internally focused – senator to senator – and more directed to the outside audience, thus trivializing and atomizing deliberations.
– Richard Fenno 1989 – The Senate through the Looking Glass - The Debate over Television

Everything that is special about the Senate, said Senator Russell Long, “is foreign to the idea of putting the matter on television, which would tend to make the Senate easier to stampede and make the difficult job of statesmanship, that type of statesmanship which requires enormous courage on the part of a senator, a great deal more difficult” (Congressional Record 15 Apr. 1982, 3582). In Long’s view, the scheme to pack the Supreme Court would not have been stopped and the Panama Canal Treaty would not have been ratified in the presence of television (Congressional Record 2 Feb. 1982, 280). Nor would Long have been as likely to have defended fellow Senator Thomas Dodd, nor would Daniel Inouye have been as likely to have defended Senator Harrison Williams, he speculated. “You need a Senate of the type we have known,” he told his colleagues, “where statesmanship can prevail, and you should not be doing things that are going to make it more difficult for statesmanship to prevail in this body” (Congressional Record 15 Apr. 1982, 3582). That is exactly what he believed television would do.
– Richard Fenno 1989 – The Senate through the Looking Glass - The Debate over Television

In 2006, the new Democratic majority in the U.S. Congress, having campaigned against “earmarks” (targeted expenditures),began to publish which lawmakers had voted for and obtained them. Here transparency, not secrecy, yielded perverse results: earmarks increased, in part because legislators saw what other legislators were getting and demanded more, in part because interest groups could more easily monitor whether legislators were delivering the goods.
– Adrian Vermeule 2010 (Harvard Law) – Open-Secret Voting

In the Italian Parliament of the 1970s and 1980s, the practice was that bills designated as issues of confidence by the government would be voted upon first by open ballot, then by secret ballot. The results frequently differed. In 1986, Bettino Craxi’s government (widely regarded as one of the most corrupt and intimidating in history) won the open vote of confidence by a margin greater than 100, only to be defeated on the secret ballot. Craxi was forced to resign.
– Adrian Vermeule 2010 (Harvard Law) – Open-Secret Voting

Lindsey Graham was pissed. The whole thing was “crap,” “a charade” and “despicable,” the South Carolina Republican said. By the fifth day of Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Graham was done with Democrats harping on what he considered to be a slanderous sexual assault allegation. “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics,” Graham said, pointing a finger across the dais of the Judiciary Committee. The clip went viral. Fox News ate it up. And for Graham, the soundbites paid off handsomely. During the next month, his campaign received $319,000 in large donations (more than $200) – or five times what he raised the previous month. More than 80 percent of the money came from people outside Graham’s home state. For the senator, who’s seeking a fourth term next year, the takeaway is clear: Full-throated histrionics, when broadcast live for millions and replayed for days on cable news, can turn into easy money. But for those focused on how Congress is stymied by partisanship and consumed by fundraising, the moment delivered this counterintuitive message: While putting Congress on TV has brought transparency to the legislative process, it has also created a prime venue for the sort of grandstanding that galvanizes a political base, divides a country and raises a whole lot of money.
– Geoff West 2019 – Cameras as Cash Machines

Open voting can induce posturing, political correctness, or, what is equally bad, bending over backwards to signal that the voter is not politically correct; it also makes possible credible commitments to corrupt bargains with other voters or third parties (special interests or other members of Congress).
– Adrian Vermeule 2010 (Harvard Law) – Open-Secret Voting

The ways in which positions can be registered are numerous and often imaginative. There are floor addresses ranging from weighty orations to mass-produced “nationality day statements.” There are speeches before home groups, television appearances, letters, newsletters, press releases, ghostwritten books, Playboy articles, even interviews with political scientists. On occasion congressmen generate what amount to petitions; whether or not to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto defying school desegregation rulings was an important decision for southern members. Outside the roll call process the congressman is usually able to tailor his positions to suit his audiences. A solid consensus in the constituency calls for ringing declarations… Division or uncertainty in the constituency calls for waffling; in the late 1960s a congressman had to be a poor politician indeed not to be able to come up with an inoffensive statement on Vietnam (“We must have peace with honor at the earliest possible moment consistent with the national interest”). On a controversial issue a Capitol Hill office normally prepares two form letters to send out to constituent letter writers--one for the pros and one (not directly contradictory) for the antis.

Yet it is on roll calls that the crunch comes; there is no way for a member to avoid making a record on hundreds of issues, some of which are controversial in the home constituencies. Of course, most roll call positions considered in isolation are not likely to cause much of a ripple at home. But broad voting patterns can and do; member “ratings” calculated by the Americans for Democratic Action, Americans for Constitutional Action, and other outfits are used as guidelines in the deploying of electoral resources.
– David Mayhew 1974 – The Electoral Connection

The congressional sunshine initiative became a tool for the very special interests whose power the reforms were supposed to dilute. Corporations and lobbying groups have seized on the open hearings to help them hold legislators accountable as never before.
– Martha Hamilton 1984 – The Washington Post – Opening Up Congress

During the closed House Ways and Means Committee mark-up, the action was brisk and lobbyists and the press were kept outside, littering the halls of the Longworth House office building with candy wrappers and cigarette butts. On the (open) Senate side, mark-up sessions were long and sometimes chaotic. The drafting took weeks. Everything was subject to change, with lobbyists reversing key votes. What took weeks on the (open) Senate side took two days in (closed) Ways and Means. And what took the better part of a week on the Senate floor and ended at dawn after a punishing 19-hour session, took just hours on the House floor.
– Hamilton 1984 – The Washington Post – Opening Up Congress

That transparency checks corruption is an article of faith among reformers, but its benefits are elusive. This paper offers five core arguments: First, most transparency policies miss much of what many citizens regard as corrupt. Second, even for the sorts of corruption directly targeted by transparency reforms, effects will often be minimal. Third, transparency can actually make corruption worse. Fourth, transparency can help powerful interests protect their advantages while weakening countervailing forces. Fifth, for transparency to check corruption, the data it reveals must be used in organized and sustained ways. While transparency will always have a place as an aspect of good governance, when it comes to corruption the alternatives may be counterintuitive – for example, “blinding” some processes that are now publicly disclosed. Understanding these problems is essential if we are to improve on the indifferent results of reform and address the political malaise afflicting many liberal democracies.
– Michael Johnston 2018 (draft) – The Sunlight Paradox

The deliberation and the decisions have to happen someplace. And in the 1970s when the conference committees would rule between the House and the Senate they have to take a bill and make it identical, they use to be private. They became public under a law in the 1970s and then more people wanted to be on these committees and the cameras were there, the press was there. So, they ended up having to make decisions, where? During the bathroom breaks. And the decisions were made in the Senators only bathrooms. And they would just huddle in there…so all this distortion happens. Increasingly what we see, on TV, is just for public consumption. Because everybody’s watching, so they just grandstand. You don’t get the same kind of deliberation…I also resonate with the idea that trust is central to it all.
– David King 2014 – Tensions in Transparency (Harvard talk)

On their face, these sunshine reforms of the 1970s—open procedures, campaign finance regulations, and ethics codes—and their periodic fine-tuning since then, were designed to make it possible, although not necessarily easy, for the public to assess the degree to which members of Congress pursue their own interests at the expense of the public’s. But in adopting even such praiseworthy reforms as increasing congressional visibility, and thus accountability, the lawmakers may have had less readily defensible intentions. Although little noted in the press or by the public, there were clear implications for the political parties in the requirement that Congress perform in public. The more visible any action, the more that competing pressures – from the president, interest groups, and the public generally – come into play; the greater the extent and intensity of such pressures, the less likely members will be to defer to party leaders and support party line.
– Larry Rieselbach 1994 – Congressional Reform

With committee proceedings and voting matters of public record, lawmakers can no longer hide behind closed doors and unrecorded votes; they must take care to protect their political futures. The presence of lobbyists and administrative officials at public sessions – where they can monitor members’ behavior, offer texts of amendments, and notify their employers when and where to apply pressure – may make it more difficult for committees to act decisively. Increasingly, they have resorted to “executive” or “informal” sessions, held prior to official meetings, where members can talk freely and develop compromises without the intrusive presence of outsiders.
– Larry Rieselbach 1994 – Encyclopedia of Policy Studies

However, other data — especially evidence assembled by behavioral economists — strongly indicate that people are neither as able to process information nor as likely to act on it as transparency theory presumes. Hence, in situations in which adverse outcomes have a relatively high disutility (e.g., there is a high probability that they will cause death, serious bodily damage, or loss of one’s home or life’s savings) or the information is complex (e.g., medical information), drawing on other sources of regulation in addition to transparency seems called for. Administrative reform cannot, however, deliver on transparency’s metaphoric promise. The state’s large, organizationally and physically dispersed public bureaucracies perform a variety of functions and make a staggering number of decisions of varying importance, not all of which can be viewed before the fact or even easily reviewed later. The state is too big, too remote, and too enclosed to be completely visible. The very nature of the state, in other words, creates the conditions of its obscurity. It can never be fully transparent, at least not in the sense that the term and its populist suspicions of the state require. Overinvestment in transparency as a metaphor leads open government advocates to lament insufficiently effective administrative laws, while the debate over how best to make the government open too often focuses on how to make the state permanently and entirely visible rather than on devising means to improve public oversight and education.
– Amitai Etzioni 2010 – Is Transparency the Best Disinfectant?

In some cases, particularly when sharply conflicting interests must be accommodated, freedom from the pressure of public opinion may be desirable. Moreover, public scrutiny of the government’s decision-making process might have an adverse effect on government decisionmakers. Officials might be reluctant to request information lest they create a public image of ignorance.
– Justice Department Spokesman 1978
– George Kennedy – Advocates of Openness

In a classic discussion of international negotiation Fred Iklé observed that “secrecy has two major effect s in diplomacy. Firstly, it keeps domestic groups ignorant of the process of negotiation, thereby preventing them from exerting pressures during successive phases of bargaining . Second, it leaves third parties in the dark and thus reduces their influence” (Iklé, 1964, p. 134).

Implicit in this is that lack of secrecy allows domestic groups to exert pressure and allows third parties to increase their influence. Iklé’s insight can be profitably placed in a broader theoretical context.

In analysing the workings of the American political system, E.E. Schattschneider argues that political conflict can be thought of as a fight: “Every fight consists of two parts: (1) the few individuals who are actively engaged at the centre and (2) the audience that is irresistibly attracted to the scene ... the outcome of every conflict is determined by the extent that the audience becomes involved in it.”

Hence, “if a fight starts, watch the crowd [since] the outcome of all conflict is determined by the scope of its contagion. The number of people involved in any conflict determines what happens; every increase or reduction in the number of participants, affects the result.” The consequence is that “the most important strategy of politics is concerned with the scope of the conflict... So great is the change in the nature of any conflict likely to be as a consequence of the widening involvement of people in it that the original participants are apt to lose control of the conflict altogether” (Schattschneider, 1960, pp. 2-3 ).

Conflicts which are liable to spread have a dynamic of their own, with the original parties un able to control the outcome (Schattschneider, 1960, pp. 2-3). As more people become aware that a decision is to be taken or a ‘fight’ is in progress, more people have the opportunity to seek to exert influence or to join the conflict. Such a process will not be neutral: the make-up of the audience will determine who benefits from such a process of expansion.

Iklé’s advocacy of secrecy can be seen as a particular form of the control of scope. Limiting the range of parties both simplifies negotiation and excludes particular groups . Defining the scope of a negotiation and managing the reaction of those not at the table is a part of any negotiation. The problem is that the result of the information explosion is a ‘Schattschneider effect’: in a shrinking world it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the secrecy that Iklé recommends. Negotiations will increasingly be carried out in the glare of publicity, so that it becomes easier for domestic political groups or third parties to exert pressure on the negotiators, who in turn must work harder to deal with the third dimension .
– Robin Brown 2012 – Negotiation in Three Dimensions

Congress’s deliberations are more accessible and transparent to the public than those of perhaps any other kind of organization.
– Walter Oleszek 2014 – Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process

Mediators may wish to make use of opportunities for informal exchange as a way of getting things unstuck. If the formal process of offer and counteroffer, as it takes place at the negotiating table, is being used to state extreme positions in public, and the disputants have reached an impasse, it may be wise to create opportunities for more informal arrangements. UNEP Executive Director, Mustafa K. Tolba, appears to have done just this during the Montreal Protocol negotiations on the depletion of the ozone layer. Tolba made extensive use of “informal consultations” designed to help narrow the gap between the divergent views of negotiators on central issues, and accomplished this away from the plenary session. (Climate and Environment)
– Gunnar Sjostedt 1992 – International Environmental Negotiation: Insights for Practice

Without reporters or lobbyists in the room, senators are free to debate difficult decisions and make deals without the pressures to posture or conform to narrow ideological or parochial views.
– Colleen Shogan 2012 – (Jacob Straus) Party and Procedure

Four reasons explaining the National Defense Authorization’s repeated successes were mentioned repeatedly throughout the staff interviews: bipartisanship, routine committee processes, staff interactions, and closed markups.
– Colleen Shogan 2011 – The Senate’s Last Best Hope

By far the most significant anti-secrecy provision in the 1970 act dealt with disclosure of House members’ votes in Committee of the Whole. The House often makes its most important policy decisions in that committee, but for 180 years its precedents had forbidden the recording of names in these votes. Under the new rule, each member’s name and vote was to be recorded upon the demand of 20 or more members.
– Walter Kravitz 1990 – Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970

Shortly thereafter, Davidson predicted that the possibility of recorded votes on many amendments would bring more challenges to committee bills, perhaps reduce committee influence over legislation, and protract floor debate. Eventually, he suggested, House leaders might turn to more frequent use of closed rules to counter such a development. As Bach and Smith (1988) have documented, this is almost precisely what happened. Far larger numbers of members did come to the floor for recorded votes, because their absence would now be a matter of public record. By denying members the anonymity they previously enjoyed, the new rule encouraged them to vote on amendments as they believed their constituents wanted them to, even if this meant defying committee leaders. Moreover, since committees were less able to protect their bills from floor amendments, members offered more of them. Deference to committee positions eroded still further, Bach and Smith assert, as the reforms of the 1970s dismembered the powers and influence of committee chairs. The subcommittee chairs who replaced them as floor managers did not inherit that influence because many of them were less experienced leaders, with lesser procedural skills and subject expertise. The confluence of these and other developments made floor activity and decisions more time consuming and less predictable. Party leaders fretted because the increased floor time spent on bills created a backlog of measures they were anxious to bring up. Unpredictability also made coalition building more difficult and disrupted members’ schedules. Furthermore, leaders, and members too, often had to face unanticipated amendments on controversial issues, sometimes deliberately offered to force them into politically dangerous votes. In 1974, the Rules Committee proposed to increase the number of supporters required to obtain a recorded vote in Committee of the Whole, but a coalition of Democrats and Republicans defeated it. As the consequences of recorded votes became clearer, however, opposition to this approach declined. Five years later, the necessary support for recorded votes was increased from 20 to 25 (H. Res. 5, 96th Cong., 1st sess.). By this time, however, party and committee leaders had turned to the Rules Committee for special rules to protect their bills from unanticipated or unpredictable dangers. That protection was provided sometimes by closed rules, but increasingly by a wide variety of restrictive rules that prevented unwanted proposals or manipulated the amending process in ways that gave procedural advantages to the majority party and its leaders. Perhaps the most fascinating of these is the so-called “King-of-the-Mountain” device: it permits votes on a series of versions of a measure, but if a majority votes for more than one of the options, the last version to earn a majority wins. In this fashion, the successful anti-secrecy movement of 1970 provoked a reaction that led to more frequent severe restrictions on the amendment process, precisely the opposite of what was intended. Perhaps there is some truth to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s axiom: “Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.” There is an additional measure of irony in these developments. In 1970, many Democrats hoped that recorded votes would help them amend bills controlled by conservative committee chairs. It did. Within a few years, however, the powers of committee chairs were largely dismantled and their influence dispersed among the large number of subcommittee chairs. Many of the 1970 reformers now occupied these positions, and they were the ones who now faced the hazards of floor action and sought the protection of restrictive rules against the consequences of recorded votes.

Walter Kravitz 1990 – Legislative Reorganization Act 1970

It is somewhat surprising that “transparency”, one of modernity’s most conspicuous current tropes, has received so little sustained analytic attention. All the more so when we notice that, in the real world, modernity and transparency rarely march hand in hand...To provide but one example, the IMF, in the interests of promoting democracy, has continually insisted on radical economic restructuring across the globe, calling for the decentralisation and privatisation of staterun enterprises. In persistently asking probing questions about who controls what economic resources, to what ends and for whose benefit, developers aim to make visible an underlying market-run rationality, to make “transparent” the everyday workings of local and global economies.
– Todd Sanders 2003 – Invisible Hands and Visible Goods

If the United States is to correct the harm caused by the recent secrecy culture, advocates who favor greater government openness must acknowledge that there are legitimate secrets. Transparency proponents must better understand the rationales for legitimate secrets.
– Frederick Schwarz 2015 – Democracy in the Dark

Transparency is one of the buzzwords of the 21st century (at least in political economy). Whether we are talking about good governance at home or exporting democratic ideals abroad, the new conventional wisdom is “the more transparency, the better.” I argue that, under many conditions, secrecy can be efficient from a social welfare point of view… The diversity of interests in democracies results in a strategic situation in which individual interest groups have incentives to engage in behavior that may prevent social improvements… Like Sunstein, I come to the conclusion that shielding representatives from “constituent pressures, including interest groups, in the hope that they will deliberate more effectively on the public good” (1985: 34-5) is also optimal under certain conditions… The main point of this paper is that transparency is not always good; rather, it is a variable of institutional design and should be treated as such. At the least, we are forced to consider that, like most conventional wisdom, the choice between secrecy and transparency is more complicated than we think.
– Barbara Koremenos 2010 – Open Covenants, Clandestinely Arrived At

The Founders faced a paradox at the heart of democracy. For the government to be effective, it needs to be able to act secretly—in some cases, to protect democracy from its enemies, both external and internal...Congress exercises oversight over the executive’s secret activities, including military and intelligence actions. But it cannot do so publicly without compromising those very activities, and so instead a limited number of lawmakers receive secret briefings on a regular basis...The normal means for deterring government abuse—oversight, transparency, institutional competition—are inconsistent with the premise that secrecy is necessary.
– Eric Posner 2013 – Before You Reboot (New Republic)

The question raises a real paradox. If government can keep secrets, then the public cannot hold it to account for its actions. But if government cannot keep secrets, then many programs - including highly desirable ones - are impossible.
– Eric Posner 2013 – The Secrecy Paradox

The reform of longest lasting significance provided that House votes in the Committee of the Whole be recorded on request, which ended the secrecy often surrounding members’ votes on important measures.
– David King 1995 – Encyclopedia of the US Congress

Many liberals believe that an unfair and corrupt political system controlled by privileged interests represents the chief obstacle to the realization of an otherwise popular left-wing agenda. Enacting reforms to the electoral and legislative process, they argue, would effectively remove this barrier, quickly producing a decisive leftward shift in the trajectory of national policy. Yet history does not support this view. Liberals in the 1970s also believed that institutions were holding back the advancement of their favored policies. They sought and achieved reforms in campaign finance, party nominations, government transparency, and congressional organization that were designed to depose moderate and conservative Democratic leaders while bolstering the influence of liberal activists at the expense of “establishment” interest groups. Rather than usher in a period of ambitious liberal achievements, these reforms in fact coincided with the close of an era of left-of-center policy change.
– Grossman & Hopkins 2005 – The Liberal Failure of Political Reform

If legislators had been personally opposed to tax reform, all they had to do was insist that the sun must shine on any tax bill, knowing that sunshine would have destroyed tax reform.
– Arnold 1990 – The Logic of Congressional Action

Consider how the Senate Finance Committee handled the Tax Reform Act of 1986. At first it held its markup sessions in a huge hearing room, where lobbyists could watch every decision and every vote. Quite predictably committee members voted to save most tax preferences, and even invent some new ones. Eventually senators decided to abandon all public sessions and to draft a new reform plan in total secrecy. All of a sudden the special interests were at a serious disadvantage, for they could no longer see who was responsible for terminating their favorite tax provisions.
– Douglas Arnold 1990 – The Logic of Congressional Action

For every example...where transparency seemed to produce more accountable and effective governance — there is another where transparency either had no effect or produced a backlash that further insulated public officials from accountability to citizens.
– Kosack & Fung 2013 – Does Transparency Improve Governance?

Just making important data available won’t cause political change. Justice Brandeis’s clever aphorism to the contrary, sunlight is not in fact the best disinfectant; actual disinfectant is. Sunlight just makes it easier for people to look at the pus.
– Aaron Swartz 2006 – Disinfecting the Sunlight

Every negotiation consists of stages and a result; if the stages become matters of public controversy before the result has been achieved, the negotiation will almost certainly founder. A negotiation is the subject of concession and counter-concession: if the concession offered is divulged before the public are aware of the corresponding concession to be received, extreme agitation may follow and the negotiation may have to be abandoned.
– Sir Harold Nicolson 1953 – The Evolution of Diplomatic Method

Secrecy has an ancient tradition in diplomacy...the secret formed the undisputed paradigm of international negotiation, both for its process as for its result: it is in all legitimacy that secret deals led to treaties intended to remain secret...Pecquet devotes a complete section of his opus (How much secrecy is necessary for success) to secrecy; like any political action, a negotiation can be jeopardized because third parties will have heard of it: “whoever lacks secrecy destroys his work while building it.” (1737: 35) – “quiconque manque au secret détruit son ouvrage en même temps qu’il l’édifie.”...There appear three distinct and successive fonfigurations of international negotiation: that in which the process as the result of the negotiation is secret; then the one where the process remains secret but the result is supposed to be public; finally, the one – today – where an injunction of transparency weighs on both the process and the result.
– Aurélien Colson 2009 – La négociation diplomatique au risque de la transparence

It’s hard to think of any good examples of transparency work accomplishing anything, except perhaps for more transparency.
– Swartz 2006 – When is Transparency Useful?

Because of familiar collective action problems, well-organized groups, who monitor legislative activity closely, are much better situated than the mass electorate to secure real accountability from incumbent legislators. And these groups have more resources for demanding accountability; they have not just individual votes with which to threaten lawmakers, but the ability to aggregate many votes and to withhold or deploy resources like lobbyist assistance, contributions, and the threat of independent spending. Unorganized groups do not enjoy these advantages and often lack the ability even to push their issues on to the agenda. All of this suggests that the rhetoric of widespread accountability may obscure the reality of too much accountability for some and not enough for many.
– Jane Schacter 2006 – Political Accountability

Given members’ contention that a main reason for closed committee sessions was to bar lobbyists, it was no surprise that Ways and Means was the one panel that had unquestionably retreated from openness. With wide-­ranging authority over taxes, trade, Social Security, health and welfare programs, it was perhaps the most heavily lobbied committee in the House.
         Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., asked critics of closed sessions, “Are you disappointed in the legislation that’s come out of the Ways and Means Committee?”
         Many conceded they were not. “I hate to say it, but members are more willing to make tough decisions on controversial bills in closed meetings,” said Democrat Don J. Pease of Ohio, a former newspaper editor who usually cast the only vote against closing Ways and Means sessions. “In a closed meeting, you can come out and say, ‘I fought like a tiger for you in there, but I lost.’”
         Representatives of the self-described citizens’ lobby, Common Cause, which campaigned for the open-meetings rules approved by the House in 1973 and the Senate in 1975, also recognized that closed sessions, particularly in Ways and Means, at times produced legislation less weighted with special-interest provisions. By 1987, the group had stopped monitoring committees to see which were closing meetings and had stopped protesting when they found violations.
– Jaqueline Calmes 1987 – CQ – Fading Sunshine Reforms

Most senators seem to agree that the recent changes in the rules (political action committees, increased roll-call voting and open meetings) have made negotiation and political self-sacrifice infinitely more difficult. Open meetings are singled out most often… “There was an enormous give and take,” Pearson [former Senator James B. Pearson, Republican from Kansas] says of the old closed-door committee system. “People could change their minds – as a result of hard bargaining and deliberation. But nobody wants to admit in public that he was wrong.”
– Alan Ehrenhalt 1982 – CQ – Team Spirit of Days Gone By Evades the Senate

Even if voters were smothered with “costless” information, it is doubtful that they would pay attention and process detailed information about the complexities of public policy they do not care much about. In contrast, special interests are “naturally” better informed; compared to the general public, they get costless information as a by-product of their specialized activities, and they have stronger incentives to invest in costly information gathering, to pay costly attention to complex information, and to invest in costly expertise that allows them to understand such information.
– Susanne Lohmann 1998 – Information Rationale For the Power of Special Interests

Institutional design might fail to increase accountability if it overlooks the fact that even behind closed doors, the actors might attempt to conceal their position, in particular when they negotiate.
– Stephanie Novak 2015 – Secrecy and Publicity

Publicity does not necessarily increase accountability.
– Novak 2015 – How Publicity Creates Opacity

Stephanie Novak 2013 – Transparency as Organized Hypocrisy

A representative of a member state X explained that (negative) votes trigger media attention while journalists usually overlook measures adopted without opposition.
– Stephanie Novak 2015 – How Publicity Creates Opacity

Forcing the publication of votes in an institutional setting that relies on diplomatic practices can have deleterious effects on accountability: In some cases, the publication of votes might operate as a window-dressing device, prompting the public belief that ministers are accountable since they publish their votes, while real monitoring of the decision makers’ stances is not possible.
– Stephanie Novak 2015 – How Publicity Creates Opacity

Decision makers used to voice their disagreement more frequently when they knew their votes would not be published.
– Stephanie Novak 2015 – Secrecy and Publicity

The publication of votes – which was supposed to increase the accountability of ministers- actually became an additional incentive for opponents to silence themselves and join the majority.
– Stephanie Novak 2015 – Secrecy and Publicity

Interviews reveal that the different actors in the legislative process make strategic use of transparency rules over the course of negotiations. In some cases, actors tend to convert transparency rules as they use publicity to put pressure on their opponents.
– Stephanie Novak 2013 – Transparency as Organized Hypocrisy

Piotrowski 2010 – Transparency and Secrecy

Perhaps the most fundamental driver of this ideological drift, however, is the most easily overlooked: the diminishing marginal returns to governmental transparency. As public institutions became subject to more and more policies of formal openness and accountability, demands for transparency became more and more threatening to the functioning and legitimacy of those institutions and, consequently, to progressive political agendas.
– David Pozen 2018 – Transparency’s Ideological Drift

A growing body of empirical evidence and analysis points to the mixed results of transparency and accountability initiatives (TAIs) in terms of improved outcomes. For all of the widely touted success stories, similar interventions have had poor results or even negative consequences in other contexts. For example, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has resulted in increased investment in services for the poor (Ackerman 2004), but it has not been successfully replicated elsewhere (Baiocchi, Heller, and Silva 2011). Social audits in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have contributed to combating corruption; however, they have been largely unsuccessful in the state of Bihar (Srinivasan and Park 2013; Dutta and others 2014). In Uganda, community scorecards for health services helped reduce under-5 mortality by one-third (Bjorkman and Svensson 2009), but community monitoring of health providers in Sierra Leone had limited results in light of accountability gaps up the chain of command (Grandvoinnet, Aslam, and Raha 2015). Interpreted from the perspective of this Report, TAIs seek to reshape the policy arena by enhancing contestability and, when successful, effectively changing the incentives of decision makers in favor of certain outcomes.
– Grandvoinnet 2017 – Transparency to Accountability (World Bank)

The United States is an especially interesting example of how transparency complicates political bargaining. Committee meetings in the House of Representatives and the Senate were long held behind closed doors, but in the 1970s, procedural changes adopted by the House and the Senate opened committee meetings to the public and the press ( – Rieselbach 1994). There are strong indications that these procedural changes had detrimental effects on lawmaking, reducing the willingness of House members and senators to seek political compromises. Ehrenhalt (1982) (cited in Warren & Mansbridge 2013 – Political Negotiation) argues that the new rules “made negotiation and political self-sacrifice infinitely more difficult” and Binder and Lee (2015, 253) argue that the “move toward greater transparency in congressional operations” has become a “double-edged sword,” offering several examples of how transparency has undone negotiations over important policy decisions in Congress.
– Lindvall 2017 – Reform Capacity

There is one more type of cost that is left to discuss: the audience costs that decision-makers suffer if agents outside the political decision-making process – such as interest organizations and important groups of voters react negatively to the deals that political decision-makers are striking. In political science, the term “audience costs” was first used in the field of international relations, referring to costs that” arise from the action of domestic audiences concerned with whether the [country’s] leadership is successful or unsuccessful at foreign policy” (Fearon 1994, 577), but I am using it here in the context of domestic politics, referring to the potential consequences of having groups that are not involved in the bargaining process witnessing the bargaining process itself (as opposed to the outcome of the bargaining process) (see Groseclose and McCarty 2001). Audience costs are likely to be lower – and reform capacity is likely to be higher – in systems where political decision-makers can negotiate in secret. This may seem like a paradoxical argument to make, since we typically think of openness and transparency as virtues, not vices. But it is an argument that has been made before. If political decision-makers face “audience costs,” they become reluctant to reveal information and make arguments that they would have been happy to reveal and make in secret communications.
– Lindvall 2017 – Reform Capacity

[The scoring of public votes began as a] lobbying tactic with an electoral edge, intended to produce legislative results by threatening hostile lawmakers with the prospect of electoral retribution. Scorecards were meant to wean group members off party labels as their sole guide in the voting booth, under the theory that greater influence could be secured through nonpartisanship. Instead, members should support a group’s true “friends”—lawmakers who reliably backed favored measures, as shown by their record, not their rhetoric—and punish those “enemies” who did not…Legislators did not take kindly to this scrutiny and its coercive flavor. They “looked upon it as black-listing,” she explains. Some rank-and-file members were also troubled by its imperative quality regarding their own vote.

ADA and ACA scores have been heavily utilized in political science as proxies for liberalism and conservatism and used to demonstrate the growing polarization of the congressional parties. Archival evidence suggests, however, that those scores were intended to create the very phenomenon they have been used to measure. They were deeply political rather than objective metrics, which the ADA and ACA used to guide their electoral activities in accordance with an increasingly partisan strategic plan. Each group directed campaign resources toward incumbent lawmakers they rated highly, but they did so unevenly—with the ADA favoring liberal Democrats over Republicans and the ACA showing a preference for conservative Republicans over time. By rewarding favored lawmakers in their preferred party, and using scores to highlight and discourage ideological outliers, they hoped to reshape the parties along more distinct and divided ideological lines.
– Emily Charnock 2018 – Interest Group Ratings

A main reason for adopting secrecy…has always been the desire to protect voters and jurors from bribery and intimidation. In his statistical analysis of the adoption of the secret ballot in national elections, Przeworski finds that both the extension of the suffrage and the introduction of the secret ballot seem to have resulted from the elites yielding to revolutionary threats by the lower classes, but to some extent also from the desire to protect opposition voters from intimidation by incumbents…As Giannetti shows in her chapter, another effect is that deputies cannot be held accountable by party leaders…Bentham defended the practice of secret voting in the Polish parliament at a time when Poland was under Russian domination. Under certain conditions, it may be more important to prevent an autocrat from punishing representatives than to ensure that the voters can punish them by non-reelection…
– Elster 2015 – Secrecy and Publicity

[In secret, closed-door sessions] opposing parties can share their perspectives freely and come to understand the perspectives of others.
– Mark Warren & Jane Mansbridge 2013 – Political Negotiation (partisanship)

Transparency, disclosure and gaming by small cadres of organized actors can go together. Need to consider the whole...I know of many cases where transparency massively backfired. Without other institutions & safeguards, the powerful can benefit more.
– Tufekci 2017 – Transparency and Disclosure

A good two-minute speech can, and often does, take a half-hour for a politician with a national television audience.
– Senator Dale Bumpers 1999 – How Sunshine Harmed Congress

It is not difficult to understand why the concept of secret deliberations, out of earshot of the King, would have special appeal in the colonial assemblies, the Continental Congress, the Congress of the Confederation and the Federal Convention to frame the Constitution. And, indeed, it was frequently utilized in all of these legislative assemblies in early American history.
– Wolfensberger 1992 – Committees of the Whole

A healthy debate on this topic is long overdue. There is shockingly little empirical research to date in political science about transparency, open meeting laws, disclosure rules and related topics.
– Fukuyama 2015 – The Limits of Transparency

The main case against excessive transparency is simple and has three components. First, it undercuts deliberation (have you seen many reasoned open debates in Congress lately?); second, the kinds of disclosure and compliance rules we impose on public officials deters many good people from entering government, and imposes huge burdens on those who do; and finally, it makes very difficult the kind of deal-making that our decentralized system of budgeting requires.
– Fukuyama 2015 – The Limits of Transparency

The Commons met in secret… and without fear of the King freely exchanged its views respecting supplies (claiming that the reason for secrecy in legislatures was to remove the intimidating pressure of the King).
– Wolfensberger 1992 – Committees of the Whole

King & Ignatieff 2014 – Tensions in Transparency (Harvard)

What I did was politics. And to do politics you have to have rooms where what goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas. And then you take it out of the room and you either sell it (present the final legislation) and you either succeed or you fail. But unless you have a deliberative space which is safe, you can’t do what you were sent there to do…Transparency takes us to trust and it takes us to actually what representative democracy is.
– Ignatieff 2014 – Tensions in Transparency (Harvard talk)

If legislators hide their tracks by delegating authority to the executive, by combining all actions into a single omnibus bill, by meeting behind closed doors, or by acting without a recorded vote, then citizens cannot reward or punish their legislators for their individual actions. In contrast, if legislators are forced to take public positions on specific programs, citizens can hold their legislators accountable for the positions they take.
– Arnold 1990 – The Logic of Congressional Action

Even when everyone involved had only the best of intentions, being observed distorted behavior instead of improving it. My findings...suggest that more-transparent environments are not always better. Privacy is just as essential for performance...Total transparency heightens the risk that our irreverence will come back to haunt us—and thus has a chilling effect on experimentation. It it’s also critical for leaders to mitigate transparency with zones of privacy, enabling just the right amount of deviance to foster innovation and productivity.
– Bernstein 2014 – The Transparency Trap

Whether the vote-buying or vote-options approach is used, presumably legislators get paid sufficiently, through some combination of carrots and sticks.
– King & Zeckhauser 2003 – Vote Buying Requires Transparency

When votes look as though they may be close, clever leaders seek out those members, often cross-pressured already, whose votes might be tipped in their direction most cheaply. Leaders then induce them-through compromises, side payments, and threats – to pledge their votes should they be needed.
– King & Zeckhauser 2003 – Vote-Buying Requires Transparency

Arguing in front of a public would rarely result in a true dialogue, but more likely lead to ritualistic rhetoric and purely strategic arguing.
– Ulbert, Risse, Müller 2004 – Arguing and Bargaining

Arguing geared to a reasoned consensus is more likely in private in-camera settings and behind closed doors given the considerable risks which actors face when they expose their interests or even identities to arguing.
– Ulbert, Risse, Müller 2004 – Arguing and Bargaining

All laws are born of negotiations. The settings and contexts for these negotiations contrast sharply with those for labor leaders and business executives, who are usually blessed with quiet negotiation rooms, reasonably unified principals, and the task of completing deals one at a time. Politicians often negotiate in a bubble, with interests groups and the media watching...Votes are visible and easily monitored by principals, but the art of negotiation lies strongly in shaping legislation before a vote.
– King & Zeckhauser 2002 – Punching and Counter-Punching in the U.S. Congress

Revealing the agent’s action leads to conformism. (A great description of partisanship)
– Andrea Prat 2005 – The Wrong Kind of Transparency

The concepts of transparency and accountability are closely linked: transparency is supposed to generate accountability. This article questions this widely held assumption. Transparency mobilizes the power of shame, yet the shameless may not be vulnerable to public exposure. Truth often fails to lead to justice.
– Jonathan Fox 2007 – Uncertain Relationship

We should avoid the common habit of thinking of individuals as the principal users and beneficiaries of transparency. Instead, professionals and organizations often constitute the most important users of public disclosures.
– Fung 2013 – Infotopia

Lobbyists learn about legislators. They study their biographies, their voting records, and the predilections of their constituents. They examine members’ policy agendas and how they may be changing, their political situation, their constituents’ views on issues, and the strength (and identity) of their likely opposition in the next election. They scour such vital information as the legislator’s religious affiliation, previous employment, and spouse’s name and occupation, all in an effort to understand how best to persuade the legislator. Federal Elections Commission records and financial disclosure forms provide names of contributors and personal information (such as stocks owned and clubs joined) that can aid the lobbyist in finding ways to influence the member. Lobbyists target members for lobbying by identifying key “swing” votes: legislators who are capable of being persuaded. They then use voting records, election statistics, public statements, and information about the member and the district to find the right “hook” to persuade the right member, including grassroots mobilization that reinforces their inside lobbying efforts.
– Rubin 2000 – Guide to Politics in America

First, the actual evidence on transparency’s impacts on accountability is not as strong as one might expect. Second, the explanations of transparency’s impacts are not nearly as straightforward as the widely held, implicitly self-evident answer to the ‘why’ question would lead one to expect. To evoke the power of sunshine is both intuitive and convincing. Indeed, these principles have guided my past 15 years’ work. Nevertheless, recently, after reviewing the empirical evidence for the assumed link between transparency and accountability, I have come to the conclusion that one does not necessarily lead to the other.
– Fox 2007 – Uncertain Relationship

Reputational concerns lead to the loss of socially valuable information.
– Morris 2001 – Political Correctness

Transparency on action can induce the agent to disregard useful private information and act in a conformist manner. As a consequence, the principal can be better off by committing not to observe the action.
– Patacconi & Vikander 2013 – On Management of Public Opinion
(referring to work of Andrea Prat)

The big problem with congressional capacity is that voters hate it – they don’t hate the idea of Congress being well informed, but they hate the idea of members spending money on themselves...And if you ever live in a swing district, you can hear whatever you want about policy issues, but two weeks before the election, every palm card that comes home, “Look how much money he spent on his own salary, or look what he did” And constituents just hate the idea of members of Congress spending any money on themselves. And so, members are loath to take any votes that show them spending any money on their own salary, on their staff salaries, on fixing up the hill, or anything like that. I was a staffer at leg branch appropriations. And this was a horrible mess, trying to get members and the capital complex would be crumbling, and members would say “We got to do something about this, but...ugh...can we make it really invisible so I don’t have to show people I voted for this.” And so that’s a huge problem....One way that members can compensate their staff more without having to take any tough votes, is by putting more staff benefits off budget....With that said, I don’t think there’s a huge appetite on the hill to follow through on radically increasing staff or salary. You talk to any member, off the record, in private, and of course they’d like to pay their staff more, and, of course, they’d love to have more staff. But the votes are extremely difficult to take, and that’s kind of the price of a representative democracy.
– Burgat & Glassman 2018 – On Legislative Capacity

*NOTE: We highlight the sections where it seems clear that increased transparency drives worsening conditions for members of Congress, which, indirectly result in diminished outcomes for constituents. Too much constituent pressure can be bad.

Washington has become subject to what psychologists call the “observer” effect, whereby subjects who know they are being watched alter their behavior. Many predicted this result long before C-SPAN became a Washington institution. In the Senate, Howard Baker, the longtime majority leader, faced broad opposition to allowing cameras in the Senate chamber. His colleagues feared that senators would begin to talk to cameras instead of each other. Predictably, members of Congress now pay little to no attention to their colleagues’ statements. C-SPAN hasn’t simply exposed dialogue that was once partially shrouded; it has entirely changed the substance of the conversation itself… Floor debate had transitioned from being a tool of internal deliberation to a platform for political posturing.
– Grumet 2014 – The Dark Side of Sunlight (City of Rivals)

Etzioni 2014 - Atlantic Magazine

Moreover, “the individuals in each group announced their choice orally, one by one, to the teller, or rogator. How individuals voted was therefore a very public affair”; the combination of voting procedures and social realities ensured the upper classes a powerful influence over the voting assemblies.
– Yacobson 1995 – The Secret Ballot and its Effects

First, while there are benefits to transparency – and final votes on all legislation should always be on the record – there are also benefits to nontransparency. In the current political climate, for example, we would likely get better results – and more of the essential compromise on which a populous democracy depends – if legislators were permitted to negotiate privately without fear of being pummeled for “selling out” if they seek ways to advance their principles and still allow government to function. That same concern allowing government to function – is a strong argument for electing a Speaker by secret ballot, as is done in the British House of Commons. This would allow every member of the House to vote for that candidate he or she actually believes would best perform the functions of Speaker, without being exposed to retaliation for lack of fealty to one’s club.
– Mickey Edwards 2012 – Parties Versus the People

Since the time of Newt Gingrich’s speakership, wedge issues have been a significant part of partisan efforts to use House debates not just to advance legislative policy but to drive a wedge between a congressperson of the other party and his or her constituents by forcing votes on amendments on which the views of constituents and party leaders are at odds. Before the 1970s, votes on amendments were generally not recorded – House members voted by voice, by raising hands, or by walking down the center aisle to be counted. When small groups of members began to insist that votes on amendments, even those that reflected intentionally divisive wedge issues, be “on the record,” Congress became more transparent and its members became more accountable, but at the cost of turning the House into a battleground for partisan advantage.
– Mickey Edwards 2012 – Parties Versus the People

As attractive as the notion may be that “sunshine is the best disinfectant” when it comes to politics, conducting negotiations in the open often leads to a hardening of partisan positions and a refusal to talk honestly about the political constraints affecting any deal. When done in the open and in view of a media likely to characterize negotiations as zero-sum, partisans feel compelled not to show any weakness. As a result, the entire give-and-take of a negotiation is likely to disintegrate into a game of chicken, as opponents view the process more as a way to win political points than to solve problems.
– Nathaniel Persily 2014 – Solutions to Political Polarization in America

It is no secret that negotiations are best done in private. James Madison remembered that, in writing the Constitution [and] the same principles of successful negotiation hold more than two centuries later. Examples of the White House and Congress strategically engaging in quiet negotiations to produce important legislation include the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the budget agreement of 1990, and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001… Low-keyed, good-faith negotiations began shortly after the president submitted his FY 1998 budget, and senior White House officials held a series of private meetings with members of Congress. Unlike the political posturing in late 1995 and early 1996, neither side focused on moving the negotiations into the public arena.

Staying private made it easier for both sides to compromise, and they each gained from doing so. For Republicans, the budget agreement capped a balanced-budget and tax-cutting drive that had consumed them since they had taken over Congress in 1995. They won tax and spending cuts, a balanced budget in five years, and a plan to keep Medicare solvent for another decade. Thus, although they did not achieve a radical overhaul of entitlement programs, they did make substantial progress toward their core goals...The decision of President Clinton and the Republican congressional leaders to seize on the opportunity provided by the surging economy and the groundwork laid by the budgets of 1990 and 1993 and to quietly negotiate and compromise, letting everyone claim victory, made the budget agreement possible.
– George C. Edwards 2015 – Solutions to Polarization (Persily)

This seemingly counterintuitive opinion — that outcomes would improve if the process is obscured — is catching on in Washington among political elites of both parties as a way of making a dysfunctional Congress work again.
Zeke Miller 2013 – Bring Back the Smoke Filled Room (Time Magazine)

Time Magazine – 2013Bring Back the Smoke Filled Room

Common Cause simply has everything upside down when they advocate ‘sunshine’ laws. When we’re in the sunshine, as soon as we vote, every trade association in the country gets out their mailgrams and their phone calls in twelve hours, and complains about the members’ votes. But when we’re in the back room, the senators can vote their conscience. They vote for what they think is good for the country. Then they can go out to the lobbyists and say: “God, I fought for you. I did everything I could.”
– Sen. Robert Packwood 1988 – Showdown at Gucci Gulch

Modern scholars have long regarded the change (to secret voting) as a democratic one, lessening the control of the upper classes over the electorate, and enhancing the voters’ effective freedom of choice.
– Yacobson 1995 – The Secret Ballot and its Effects

Roll call votes can be a useful tool to examine certain aspects of legislative behavior. Scholars who choose to use roll call voting as the basis of their studies, however, must consider how electronic voting has changed member behavior. Prior to 1973, members were at the mercy of party leadership, the media, and their own observations when determining how other members were voting. Today, all a member has to do is look up at the display boards and see what color dot appears next to their colleague’s name. The increase in information available in real time to members has undoubtedly changed voting strategies.
– Jacob Straus 2012 – The Rise of Roll Call Votes

D’Angelo 2016 – On Committee of the Whole

It is possible to have full transparency on the supply side of the equation and… much less than full transparency on the demand side.
– Breton 2007 – The Economics of Transparency in Politics

(This quote highlights a number of the ways for a congressman to ‘sell’ their vote for fame or fortune, all of them relying on transparent/public voting) Different congressmen pursue quite different goals – reelection, power and prestige in the House, the approval of the editorial writers of The New York Times, a good shot at a seat in the US Senate, the framing of policy in the national interest – but congressmen do have goals and try to use their votes on the floor of the House to enhance the probability of attaining them. A few ‘bad’ votes may not significantly alter the congressman’s chances for successful goal attainment, but the innate prudence of ambitious men dictates strenuous efforts to avoid mistakes and to calculate the consequences of their actions and votes as much as possible.
– Matthews & Stimson 1975 – Yeas and Nays

If ‘more visibility [aka transparency]’ is displayed, as it is being displayed, as a universal panacea, it is likely to produce far more ills than it cures. To the extent that visibility hampers responsible behaviour, instigates image-selling and demagogy, intensifies conflicts, leads to decisional paralysis or, in international politics, to defeat, to the same extent external risks are best looked after by other means and ways of control. Let alone that the efficacy of a searchlight diminishes with its diffusion. Too much visibility, on too many things, drowns visibility.
– Giovanni Sartori 1975 – Will Democracy Kill Democracy

For instance, [secrecy] protects the freedom of the voter. Conversely, [transparency] distorts when it imposes ‘image selling’ to the detriment of ‘responsible behaviour’. Furthermore, [transparency] can well enhance, if not create, conflicts; so much so that ‘removal from [transparency]’ is the most usual way of lessening tensions. The latter two aspects can be illustrated by the actual proceedings of the Italian parliament, where most legislation is enacted by the parliamentary commissions and is possible only because these commissions are truly invisible committees.
– Giovanni Sartori 1975 – Will Democracy Kill Democracy

Sometimes we don’t want to take a recorded vote when there are a lot of lobbyists out there... [In a closed session] a member can enter a mild protest about the defeat of an amendment he might otherwise feel compelled to support... Then, when the markup is over, the member can go out into the hall and say to the lobbyist, “I worked to get your amendment adopted but I just got outvoted.”
– Strahan 2011 – The New Ways and Means

Strahan 2011 – The New Ways and Means

Strahan 2011 – The New Ways and Means

Transparency, unlike other forms of regulation, has a major disadvantage: it assumes that those who receive the information released by producers or public officials can properly process it and that their conclusions will lead them to reasonable action. However, the well-known and often-cited findings of behavioral economics demonstrate that very often the public is unable to properly process even rather simple information because of “wired in,” congenital, systematic cognitive biases.
– Etzioni 2014 – Transparency is Overrated

There is, moreover, another way in which the changes of recent years have jeopardized deliberation within Congress. Congressmen are now much more accountable for their actions. There is less they can do in secret. Nearly all committee markup sessions and conference committee meetings are now open to public scrutiny. Votes within committees must be recorded in ways not required a decade ago. The institution of the recorded teller vote on the House floor has reduced the likelihood that important decisions will be made without a record of each congressman’s vote. Largely overlooked, however, in this drive for accountability has been the effect on deliberation. Reasoning on the merits of public policy is not the same thing as registering constituent opinion at each stage of the legislative process. Deliberation requires both some measure of independent judgment by the legislator and a degree of flexibility in the decision-making process that allows for evolving opinion and changes of mind. This is particularly difficult if the public is looking over the legislator's shoulder at each step in the process.
– Joseph Bessette 1982 – Is Congress A Deliberative Body?

There is no reason to think that the information emanating from the political environment will be unbiased or naturally lead members to support Pareto-improving reforms.
– Binder 2006 – Governing in a Polarized Age

Simply making information available is not sufficient to achieve transparency. Large amounts of raw information in the public domain may breed opacity rather than transparency.
– Transparency Initiative 2016 – website

And perhaps most important, the partisan character of amending activity changed suddenly with the advent of recorded electronic voting. With new voting procedures in the 1970s, [the minority party] could force [the majority party] to go on the record, often repeatedly, on divisive amendments. [The minority] actively sought ways to challenge committee products, raise ideologically charged issues, and force recorded votes...in order to compel [the majority] to take politically dangerous public positions. The effect, quite naturally, was to heighten the personal and partisan conflict on the floor.
– Steven Smith 1989 – Call to Order

After a few experiments with open conferences in 1974, the House and Senate adopted identical rules requiring conference meetings to be open to the public…The House went a step further in 1977 when it required that the House itself must approve a motion to close a conference’s meetings…As a result, members, lobbyists, journalists, and others may observe most formal sessions of most conferences.
– Steven Smith 1989 – Call to Order

The budget resolution was the first bill of genuinely national import to come to the floor after the cameras were turned on. To Speaker O’Neill’s chagrin, the resolution faced forty-one first- and second-degree amendments and the debate stretched over three weeks, setting records for budget resolution debates in the House. O’Neill attributed the multitude of amendments to the presence of television cameras. There is little doubt that several amendments were offered for symbolic purposes... The effects on amending activity of televised sessions, which began in March 1979, were never given a chance to materialize fully. Beginning in late 1979, the shift to more restrictive special rules for major bills prevented the members from fully exploiting the opportunities created by House television.
– Steven Smith 1989 – Call to Order

*NOTE: Smith claims, and it seems evident, that the massive rise of restrictive special rules and closed rules (two dangerous and anti-democratic turns of the mid-late 1970s) were driven by the rise of 1970 transparency.

On many vital issues, such as civil rights, policy outcomes were controlled by a conservative majority or at least a sizable obstructionist conservative minority. The conservative coalition also controlled decisions on several key committees and so was in a position to block committee action on legislation important to many Democratic liberals. Norms of committee deference and apprenticeship served to reinforce the power of the conservative oligarchy. For his part, [Lyndon B.] Johnson attempted to avoid open intraparty splits by refusing to bring up highly divisive legislation to the floor until he had the votes, and even then he worked to avoid amendments and recorded votes on which party factionalism would surface. Thus, much to the dismay of some liberal Democrats, Johnson's deliberate strategy reduced the number of controversial bills brought to the floor, the number of filibusters, and the volume of amending activity.
– Steven Smith 1989 – Call to Order

*NOTE: What Smith is saying here, is that even before the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 there was a conscious effort by some to avoid divisive roll call votes. And so, to pass the civil rights bills and avoid partisan pressures, Johnson increased the level of secrecy.

TIn the post-Watergate atmosphere, almost no congressman wanted to go on record as opposing open decision making in the federal government. A vote against government in the sunshine could become a centerpiece of a challenger’s campaign in 1976. [And] a vote against sunshine laws would lead to… hostile newspaper and television editorials. The media, by its very nature, is strongly supportive of open meetings in government. Thus, almost all members of Congress voted for sunshine bills, which passed 86-0 in the Senate in November 1975 and 390-5 in the House in July 1976.
– Andrew S. McFarland 1984 – Lobbying in the Public Interest (Common Cause)

Obfuscation is thus compatible with omitting information, transmitting information beyond the possibility of using it or, clearly, transmitting false information.
– Brosio 2007 – The Economics of Transparency in Politics

Congress can now be monitored and influenced as never before. As a result, lobbies, which do most of the monitoring and influencing, have gained power compared with the target of their efforts – the government.
– Zakaria 2003 – Future of Freedom

The theory was that many lobby groups would profit from open sessions and votes... “We got a big lobby effort going,” Conlon said “But it is what you would call a ‘public interest lobby.’ They understand that this bill, with our revisions, is really going to revolutionize this place”... “Now just one minute,” interjected peppery Wayne Hays (D.Ohio). “If you want to write up a bill with a lobbyist sitting at every Member’s elbow, some of you...are going to have a rude awakening”
– Bibby & Davidson 1972 – On Capitol Hill

*NOTE: Richard Conlon was a principal 1970 advocate of congressional transparency, and it was he (along with the support of lobbyists) who focused the push for the LRA sunshine amendments

In a teller vote representatives file quickly past two tellers and vote “aye” or “nay,” without any record of who voted which way. The device originated in the British House of Commons and has been used on this side of the Atlantic from the early days of the Republic. It is used only on amendments and only when the House is sitting as a Committee of the Whole. But the House almost always sits as a Committee of the Whole for serious consideration of legislation, and so the most significant votes have often been cast in unrecorded teller votes. The technique has been attractive because it is quick and simple and allows members to vote without worrying about public repercussions.
– Bibby & Davidson 1972 – On Capitol Hill

There are cases in which all the information about a policy is freely available to all, and even fully reported in the media, and, nonetheless, the policy smacks of opacity – or, rather here, of obfuscation. Obfuscation works, not by hiding anything, but in the way the policy and especially its objectives are formulated or framed.
– Salmoon & Wolfelsperger 2007 The Economics of Transparency in Politics

While it is frustrating to stand outside the committee room trying to guess what is going on inside, he thinks everyone benefits in the long run. ‘In a public session there are so many different interest groups eyeballing the congressmen that they’re so torn they end up doing something nonsensical... that’s how we got where we are.’
Harold Scoggins Jr. – Lobbyist for the Oil Industry
– Fessler – Rewriting Tax Code (CQ Quarterly 1985)

It’s a real dilemma for liberal reformers. When you look at recent tax bills, the best ones have come out of closed sessions. You take what you can get and hope someday you can get a good bill at an open meeting.
Jeff Drumtra – Ralph Nader representative
– Fessler – Rewriting Tax Code (CQ Quarterly 1985)

“We ought to be willing to look the lobbyists in the eyes and make those decisions right out there in public.’” But: “‘In at least some circumstances, you probably get better legislation from closed sessions. Clearly in the type of atmosphere we worked in recently we had to enact some tax provisions that people don’t like, and I think it’s easier to do that in closed session.’ ‘With a closed mark up you can always say to lobbyists or constituents that you fought like a tiger for their position and asked for a record vote, but not enough members raised their hands. Members almost feel obligated to demand a record vote in public, and then you have members voting in a way they don’t really want.’
– Fessler 1985 – Rewriting Tax Code Behind Closed Doors

It is not hard to imagine what happened: The substantive conversations that were once held in the House and Senate chambers were moved to the cloakrooms, or at least to private deliberations held away from C-SPAN’s cameras. At one point the franker debates were still held in committee hearings – though eventually even many of those were put on C-SPAN as well. The real negotiations began to be held in leadership offices. Rather than expand access to decision-making to a wider range of viewers, C-SPAN has in fact done the opposite: It has inadvertently pushed real deliberation further into the shadows by centralizing power among a smaller group of leaders.
– Grumet 2014 – The Dark Side of Sunlight (City of Rivals)

Perfect secrecy and immediate despatch are sometimes requisite...So often and so essentially have we heretofore suffered, from the want of secrecy and despatch, that the constitution would have been inexcusably defective, if no attention had been paid to those objects...Thus we see, that the constitution provides that our negotiations for treaties shall have every advantage which can be derived from talents, information, integrity, and deliberate investigation, on the one hand' and from secrecy and despatch, on the other.
– John Jay 1788 – The Federalist Papers

Part of the reason the administration of President George W. Bush and those of other governments are able to put the clamps on such information is that transparency is not always good. If people do not agree on what constitutes good or bad behavior by a government or corporation, revealing that behavior may just spark conflicts over competing views of the public good. Some institutional secrets are legitimately worth protecting – there is no inherent right for one corporation to know its rival’s trade secrets, and military disclosure can allow adversaries to find weaknesses and locate targets. Misinterpretation, accidental or deliberate, can transform disclosure from an opportunity for public accountability to an exercise in scapegoating.
– Ann Florini 2003 – The Coming Democracy

Progressive reformers, whether Democratic or Republican, have been calling for more “open and democratic” government since at least the 1960s. In fact, the roots of such reform date to Woodrow Wilson and probably even to the Anti-Federalist concern for more simple, direct democracy. Recently, The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein cited as one of “the 13 reasons Washington is failing,” the idea that “too much sunshine can burn” saying “sometimes, it’s easier to resolve disputes in private.” Madison, of course, would concur. The Constitutional Convention succeeded, in part, because the fifty-five delegates met behind closed doors, under strict confidentiality rules. As witness Madison’s Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention, published only after his death in 1836, delegates were able to repeatedly speak their minds and change their minds across the long summer of 1787. Madison clearly did not think the cure to the ills of democracy is more democracy. He created republican, that is, representative, institutions designed to “refine and enlarge the public views.” Viewing the sausage-making of the legislative process, especially under the unblinking stare of the media, has probably not increased citizen trust in government. The decline in trust of government since the 1960s is coincident with transparency reforms.
– William F. Connelly 2013 – Partisan, Polarized, Yet Not Dysfunctional?

James Madison on how transparency drives partisanship

Forcing (transparent/public) votes on divisive “hot-button” issues provides campaign ammunition to party colleagues and supporters back home.
– Walter Oleszek 2015 – Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process

Senators may over several days “cast back-to-back votes on a dizzying array of dozens of amendments,” many designed to provide campaign ammunition (so-called gotcha amendments) for the next election.
– Walter Oleszek 2015 – Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process

Roll-call votes are typically not requested randomly by a disinterested party; they are selected by a purposive actor (such as a party leader) with a vested interest in what the vote will reveal about legislative behavior to a particular audience. Thus, we cannot be confident that we can infer behavior on the unobserved (non-roll-call) votes from the roll- call votes. This disjunct has negative implications for the use of roll- call votes to estimate legislators’ ideal points, the dimensionality of the policy space, and party influence on legislative voting.
– Carrubba, Gabel & Hug 2008 – Legislative Voting Behavior

Each committee first attempted to write a reform bill in public but soon discovered that sunshine was incompatible with reform.
– Arnold 1990 – The Logic of Congressional Action

How can citizens control legislators when most citizens pay scant attention to public affairs? Why should legislators worry about citizens’ preferences when they know most citizens are not really watching them?
– Douglas Arnold 1993 – Can Inattentive Citizens Control Representatives?

Sunshine rules instituted in the mid-1970s require that conference committee meetings be open to the public. However, because a public forum inhibits the hard bargaining that is often necessary, much negotiation takes place informally behind the scenes. To reach a compromise, members may need to retreat from positions they have advocated, often ones they have argued for strongly and ones with ardent interest group and constituency support; that is easier done behind closed doors. Staff typically work to resolve the often myriad minor differences between the bills; members become directly involved in the behind-the-scenes negotiations when major, controversial provisions are at issue. Often formal, open conference meetings simply ratify deals worked out elsewhere.
– Barbara Sinclair 2006 – Unorthodox Lawmaking

Greater transparency is not an unmitigated good. In all likelihood, the trend toward greater transparency will be at once positive and pernicious. More information about other societies may reveal conflicting values and interests as well as shared ones. More information about the military capabilities of other states may show vulnerability and encourage aggression by the strong against the weak. Greater transparency can highlight hostility and fuel vicious cycles of belligerent words and deeds. It can highlight widespread prejudice and hatred, encourage the victimization of out-groups and by showing broad acceptance of such behavior without repercussions, legitimize it. Greater transparency can undermine efforts at conflict resolution and, when conflicts do break out, it can discourage intervention by third parties. Transparency sometimes can make conflicts worse.
– Kristin M. Lord 2006 – Perils and Promise of Global Transparency

Greater transparency will not necessarily promote democracy and good governance… In some cases, more transparency may actually strengthen illiberal regimes and increase their legitimacy. To a large extent, the effects of transparency depend on what transparency reveals, who benefits, and how people interpret the information they receive in a more transparent global society. Transparency may reveal positive trends and an environment conducive to peace; but it may also reveal negative trends and an environment of suspicion and hate.
– Kristin M. Lord 2006 – Perils and Promise of Global Transparency

In my book Data and Goliath, I write about the value of privacy. I talk about how it is essential for political liberty and justice, and for commercial fairness and equality. I talk about how it increases personal freedom and individual autonomy, and how the lack of it makes us all less secure. But this is probably the most important argument as to why society as a whole must protect privacy: it allows society to progress...People need the space to try alternate ways of living without risking arrest or social ostracization. People need to be able to read critiques of those norms without anyone’s knowledge, discuss them without their opinions being recorded, and write about their experiences without their names attached to their words. People need to be able to do things that others find distasteful, or even immoral. The minority needs protection from the tyranny of the majority. Privacy makes all of this possible. Privacy encourages social progress by giving the few room to experiment free from the watchful eye of the many. Even if you are not personally chilled by ubiquitous surveillance, the society you live in is, and the personal costs are unequivocal.
– Bruce Schneier 2018 – Surveillance Kills Freedom by Limiting Experimentation

Jay Foreman 2015 – Humorous Look at Open Voting

It’s always better in our industry to have transparency, we’re all the stronger for it.
– McDevitt (Lobbyist) 2017 – Hume Brophy

We find no evidence of lobbyists or powerful groups resisting transparency. Instead we find lots of evidence that they embrace it.

Oft-times in order to get anything out it is necessary to compromise way below what the public stand of the member would be. To have than open to the public would greatly hamper, I am afraid, the successful reaching of a consensus by compromise which is the essence of the finalization of legislation.
– Sen. Mike Monroney (Oklahoma) 1967 – Advocates of Openness

*NOTE: This citation, from a member of Congress, takes place three years before Congress opened all its committees.

Potential negative effects that transparency might have on bargaining efficiency…[When] certain special interest groups have undue influence over a decision, then secrecy can have the useful effect of shutting such groups out of the initial stages of the process.
– David Stasavage 2005 – Does Transparency Make a Difference?

A closer investigation reveals that transparency may also have important costs. When representatives know that their individual bargaining positions and/or votes will become part of the public record, they may have a greater incentive to take positions that will demonstrate loyalty to a constituency, even if this means taking an action that they know is less likely to produce the policy outcome they think is best.
– David Stasavage 2005 – Does Transparency Make a Difference?

As the U.S. government has become larger and more open, groups that petition it – lobbyists – have become Washington’s greatest growth industry.
– Fareed Zakaria 2003 – Future of Freedom

Looking back, it is my honest belief that secrecy was crucial for the positive result from our negotiations.
– Ahmed Qurei 2006 – From Oslo to Jerusalem: The Palestinian Story of the Secret Negotiations

In sum, although congressional activity is certainly more accessible to citizens, as the reformers hoped, the weight of the accumulated evidence suggests that the sunshine reforms have had limited effects. In fact, visibility may contribute to legislative inertia. Ever aware that they are, in a real sense, on display, members may conclude that concern for constituents and policy caution, inaction, is the wisest course. Rather than risk alienating constituents and groups whose reelection support they feel is vital, they may avoid controversy and decline to act. Thus, by increasing the possibility for external actors to participate in congressional politics, the accountability reforms may have made Congress not only more democratic but also more permeable – more open to pressures from voters and organized interests that reduce the institution’s ability to make effective public policy. Steps to increase accountability, like those to promote decentralization (responsiveness), may have inadvertently undercut congressional responsibility.
– Larry Rieselbach 1994 – Congressional Reform

A decade after Congress voted to open all committee sessions to the public in the interests of “government in the sunshine,” some of its most important committees have started closing legislative voting sessions, saying they can get more done behind closed doors…Such closed sessions are held because members have expressed the feeling that they can arrange compromises more easily when lobbyists cannot watch their every move and every decision does not have to recorded formally.
– Rich 1985 – Washington Post

Reformers in the 1970s also sought to increase transparency in Congress through “sunshine laws” so that the public could more easily observe the actions of members and hold them accountable for their decisions. These changes may have had the unintended consequence of making it more difficult for members to reach compromises and negotiate solutions. Congress adopted a series of important sunshine laws in the 1970s (Rieselbach 1986, Wolfensberger 2000). Previously, committees had routinely met behind closed doors, allowing members to hash out their differences in private. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 opened committee proceedings to media broadcasts to make them visible to the public. The House and Senate also required that committee sessions, including critical mark-ups of legislation, be open to the public unless the panel voted to close them. A second reform targeted voting. The House ended its practice of reporting vote tallies rather than the votes of individual members. Reporting tallies allowed members to keep their vote secret from their constituents. Reformers wanted member votes to be public in order to ensure members could be held accountable for their actions. Finally, the House and the Senate both allowed the proceedings on the floor to be televised on C-SPAN. Sunshine laws are generally regarded as a public good on the grounds that transparency allows the public to hold politicians accountable for their actions. However, some research finds that transparency may actually harm democratic deliberation by making it more difficult to reach compromises. Congressional scholars Sarah Binder and Frances Lee observe that transparency in Congress is a “double-edged sword” that raises the costs of deal-making and interferes with the search for solutions (Binder and Lee 2013, 63-64). It is costly for members to compromise on a position important to interest groups and voters, and public negotiations may undermine the horse-trading common to successful agreements. From this perspective, secrecy and privacy are required for members to resolve their differences, and sunshine laws may have had the unintended consequence of making the passage of appropriations bills more difficult.
– Peter C. Hanson 2015 – Restoring regular order in congressional appropriations

Political scientists have argued that reducing transparency in Congress could improve negotiating conditions and aid the passage of legislation. I am skeptical that members would view this step to be in their electoral interest, but it is possible that giving members a greater degree of insulation from the intense gaze of interest groups and the public would improve their ability to negotiate and pass spending legislation in regular order. Effective negotiations require privacy that is hard to come by in the wake of the sunshine laws passed in the 1970s. Committee meetings are now routinely open to the public, and floor proceedings are broadcast on C-SPAN. Most controversial votes are recorded. Members who stray from the party line to work with the other side in this environment are immediately criticized. Arguably, one of the reasons Congress may have turned to the creation of omnibus bills is because they are informally negotiated behind closed doors. They may offer exactly the kind of flexibility and privacy members need to make compromises. It is possible that members could more easily reach agreement on bills in the regular order if there were more opportunities for private negotiation or fewer recorded votes. For example, each chamber could report vote tallies on appropriations bills rather than the votes of individual members. Members might be more likely to cast tough votes if their decisions were shielded from direct view. The primary problem with this approach is that transparency is highly valued by numerous stakeholders who are likely to strongly oppose any effort to allow members to make decisions in secret. With a few notable exceptions such as the limits placed on disclosure requirements in campaign finance laws by the Supreme Court, the political system has moved toward greater rather than less transparency. Sites like Congress.gov make bills, reports and votes immediately accessible to the public. Members and party organizations use Twitter to blast out links to information and to take positions on a continuing basis. The lack of transparency in creating an omnibus bill is one of the key criticisms that members, journalists, interest groups and scholars have made of the process. Transparency is generally valued as a way to prevent corruption, while secrecy is equated with inappropriate influence and shady dealings. It is likely that members advocating fewer recorded votes or closing committee meetings would be subject to strong criticism, and for that reason would perceive it to be against their electoral interests.
– Peter C. Hanson 2015 – Restoring regular order in congressional appropriations

There is no question that the fact that teller votes are not recorded is beneficial to some Representatives on certain issues. Anonymity is assured and they can vote without fear of interest groups or constituents finding out…this may allow the Member to vote his conscience without fear of retribution…
– Rep Bill Steiger 1970 – Congressional Record - House

The irony is that we’ve come full circle: Efforts to open up government to the public have, by and large, expanded the tool kit and influence of highly organized and well-funded “special” interests.
– Jason Grumet 2014 – The Dark Side of Sunlight (City of Rivals)