This chapter develops a selective genealogy of the concept of publicity as it appears throughout the history of political thought, beginning with Plato and ending with Henry Sidgwick. Beyond its intrinsic interest, there is instrumental value to tracing a genealogy of publicity. Two benefits stand out in particular. First, by looking to what the giants of the past had to say about transparency in government, we find a greater diversity of positions than we currently see. Some flatly reject openness in government, embracing opacity in its place. And second, looking to the past shows how the concept of publicity can take on many different forms. Sometimes it refers to being offered justifications for the laws one lives under, sometimes it means that persons must have access to the philosophical theories inspiring the political systems they inhabit, sometimes it is used as a kind of test to probe the morality of public policies, sometimes it means that persons should be able to carefully monitor what public officials are up to, and so on.

In this book’s introduction, I noted that the dominant view of transparency among politicians and policy wonks is that transparency is unequivocally a good thing and that more of it is always better. We now know that the true story is a far more complicated one. This book has analyzed the concept of publicity from a philosophical perspective. Of course, we found that there are compelling arguments for insisting on greater transparency in government. But there are reasons to avoid transparency as well, and these trade-offs must be carefully navigated before we come to an all-things-considered judgment of transparency’s role in government. In much of my analysis, navigating these trade-offs led me to come out in favor of greater opacity. Let me summarize my main findings.

On one understanding of the concept, publicity deems it impermissible for public officials to hide the reasons and moral theories that inform their policy choices. As just one example of this, publicity forbids the utilitarian from cloaking her policy recommendations in terms of a moral theory other than utilitarianism. While this might seem like a compelling requirement at first, its proponents have offered little argument for it, as defenders of utilitarianism have been quick to point out. To remedy this, I try to rehabilitate the blanket ban on false rationales demanded by this understanding of publicity, relying on the work of Bernard Williams (himself a fierce critic of esoteric utilitarianism). None of the arguments recovered from Williams successfully rule out secret rationales on the part of public officials. This understanding of publicity, I conclude, lacks compelling justification.

Most democracies are representative. Elected by the people, representatives constitute a legislature and create laws. This is typically done through voting. This raises an interesting question of institutional design: should our representatives vote transparently or by secret ballot? No contemporary philosopher, to my knowledge, has addressed this question. In this chapter I argue that if we take seriously the value of political equality—a normative ideal that nearly all democratic theorists embrace—then voting among representatives in a legislature ought to occur by secret ballot. Representatives should vote just as citizens do in elections. Democratic equality, I argue, thrives in darkness.

John Rawls’s full publicity condition says that persons in the society the philosopher theorizes about must in some sense have access to everything the philosopher says in her theorizing. In other words, everyone living in Rawls’s perfectly just society must have access to A Theory of Justice and related works. This account of publicity is the most difficult to analyze because there are many different interpretations of what, precisely, it requires and also many different arguments in its favor. Not only this, but certain criticisms of Rawls that some deem fatal to his project depend on particular interpretations of this publicity condition that can quite reasonably be rejected. In the current chapter I show that, once again, we face deep trade-offs. Insisting on this account of publicity will change the way political philosophy must be done, but doing so will help achieve normatively worthwhile ends.

Nearly all legal theorists agree that publicity is a key component of the rule of law, but they disagree over what this means. Some mean that persons must know the body of law they are subject to; others say that persons must simply be able to access what the law requires of them, even if they remain completely ignorant of it. Both accounts of legal publicity are deeply flawed, I argue. After establishing this, I develop a new way of understanding what legal publicity means. Legal publicity is not about persons knowing the law or having access to it. Rather, it’s about when persons are held accountable for violating the law. Publicity demands that persons be held accountable for violating a law only if they were aware this law regulated their conduct. This novel account of legal publicity revolutionizes how we should think about the rule of law and also how we should design our legal institutions.

A famous legal maxim holds that “justice should not only be done but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.” On one understanding of the concept, publicity demands that this maxim also apply to questions of social, or distributive, justice. Not only must a just distribution be achieved, but persons must see that a just distribution has been achieved. John Rawls is a defender of this requirement, along with democratic theorist Thomas Christiano. There are compelling arguments in defense of this understanding of publicity. The problem is that there are many different ways of understanding what it means to see distributive justice done, and they all come with significant drawbacks. Perhaps these philosophers are correct that distributive justice must be seen to be done, but letting it be seen will require that we give up other things of value. This chapter highlights these difficult choices.

Democracy is not only about voting. Deliberation plays an important role as well. Just like voting, deliberation can occur behind closed doors in the shadows or be subject to the glare of sunlight. In this chapter I argue that deliberation among representatives in a legislature ought to occur behind closed doors and away from the glare of sunlight, but only if it is structured properly. More specifically, I propose a new way of institutionalizing secret deliberation that secures its benefits while avoiding its costs. The key is to add external accountability mechanisms of a very specific kind to the deliberative process and to select participants in the secret deliberative body in a very particular way. If we do both things, then democratic deliberation is optimized when it occurs behind closed doors.

The well-ordered society, according to John Rawls, is one that is regulated by principles of justice and in which everyone accepts these principles. One understanding of publicity takes this latter requirement a step further. According to Rawls, not only must everyone in the well-ordered society accept the same theory of justice, but publicity demands that everyone know that everyone else accepts this theory. Citizens’ beliefs about morality and justice must be transparent to one another. I examine this understanding of publicity in the current chapter. Why insist on such a requirement? I argue that the main reason has to do with social unity. If social unity in a diverse liberal order is to be achieved, then we must know what our fellow citizens believe about justice. The problem is that generating the knowledge required by this understanding of publicity is riddled with difficulties. I propose some mechanisms that might be capable of getting the job done. These mechanisms are, however, deeply imperfect.

This introductory chapter offers an overview of Secret Government: The Pathologies of Publicity. The book is split into two separate and autonomous parts, roughly tracking what I take to be two distinct traditions in political philosophy. Part I is focused on transparency as it relates to questions of institutional design. Part II focuses on publicity as it relates to the political philosophy of John Rawls and the liberal tradition he inspired. In conjunction, parts I and II jointly offer something like a comprehensive philosophical analysis of transparency in government.