by Thomas S. Blanton

HISTORY WILL name the ten years from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the collapse of the World Trade Center towers as the Decade of Openness. George Soros was the poster child for the decade—multinational money manager turned missionary for the open society—but at ground level, social movements around the world seized on the demise of Communism and the decay of dictatorship to demand more open, democratic, responsive governments. And governments did respond. President Yeltsin opened the Soviet archives, at least partially. President Clinton declassified more U.S. secrets than all his predecessors put together. Truth commissions on three continents exposed disappearances and genocide. Prosecutors hounded state terrorists and courts jailed generals. The Net and the Web subverted censorship and eroded authoritarians.

Most strikingly of all, in the past ten years countries ranging from Japan to Bulgaria, Ireland to South Africa, and Thailand to Great Britain enacted formal statutes guaranteeing their citizens' right of access to government information. Today, even after September 11th, congresses and parliaments in India, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Mexico are debating draft freedom of information laws. Some 45 countries now boast formal laws guaranteeing the right to information (even though complete implementation is a reality in only a few). The total number of freedom of information requests filed with the federal government of the United States—one of the earlier FOI countries—last year surpassed two million; and in the first week of the Japanese FOI law, starting April 2, 2001, Japanese citizens filed more than 4,000 requests. Similarly, the multi-lateral institutions all face freedom of information challenges, from their member states (as in the European Union, with Sweden, Denmark and Finland criticizing a culture of secrecy led by Germany and France) or from civil society (the World Bank is now fumbling with a largely rhetorical disclosure policy).¹

September 11th ended the Decade of Openness, but perhaps only in the United States. Even before September 11th, the Bush administration had opted for secrecy in several high-profile cases, for example, fighting off Congressional requests for the names of private sector advisors on energy policy, and stalling release of Reagan-era documents under the Presidential Records Act. But the terrorist attacks turned this tendency into a habit, sometimes justifiably (as in details of special operations in Afghanistan). More reflexively, Bush officials have now granted former presidents veto power over release of their administration's records, have ordered agencies to use the most restrictive and legalistic response possible for FOIA requests, and have denounced leaks even while mayors and local law enforcement complain about the feds' failure to share information. This strategy is likely to fail, since even the career prosecutors and military judge advocate generals have protested against secret tribunals, and the openness of the U.S. system will prove the most effective weapon against terrorism—empowering citizens, preventing stupid policies, holding more accountable the despots who are now partners in the war on terrorism, making U.S. ends more congruent with its means. And, of course, the media is now reporting that a lack of openness may have played a role in the anthrax deaths of two unwarned postal workers.²

Ironically, even as the U.S. heightens secrecy, countries like Mexico or Romania are still moving in the freedom of information direction. The September 11th attacks have not changed either the pressure from below for more accountable government, or the pressure from above from globalization for more transparent markets. In the middle, empowered by both pressures, are the political and legal reformers with the strikingly relevant idea of freedom of information.

Take the poverty-stricken state of Rajasthan, for example. Seven years ago, the Indian freedom of information movement began there, in 120-degree heat, when a mostly-illiterate village held a public reading of government records. Activists led by a former top civil servant had used their connections in the bureaucracy to get a copy of the local government account books for all the money spent on the village that year, and were holding a first-ever public recitation. They had invited a pro from Delhi to come, a professor of public management who had filed some of the first legal actions for environmental information. Envious of the local turbans and loose robes, the professor was roasting, and the villagers looked around for some shade. There was no town hall, only mud huts, and finally the group sat down alongside three mud-brick walls of an unfinished structure, where, as the afternoon wore on, the walls would at least cast a shadow.

First came the muster roll, the list of names of those paid to work on the various road repair and building projects in the area. Everyone listened solemnly until about the fourth name, when chuckling broke out. The Delhi professor looked puzzled until someone explained that the person named had died three years before—"dead souls" littered the muster roll. Then the reader started on expenditures made: "30,000 rupees [about $800] to repair the roof of the school." The villagers guffawed: "This is the school building that we're sitting in!"³

Now, six years later, the state of Rajasthan has passed a formal freedom of information law, guaranteeing its citizens the right of access to state records—as have five other Indian states. The professor from Delhi, Shekhar Singh, co-founded the National People's Campaign for the Right to Information, intended to combat corruption and strengthen civil rights; and the Indian congress is currently debating a national freedom of information law. India is just the latest example of a phenomenon sweeping the world, changing the entire governance paradigm for democracies—the international movement for freedom of information.⁴

Motivations for freedom of information have been as varied as the circumstances in each country. Often, the momentum towards openness reforms has arisen from scandals, such as the corruption and graft endemic to local government in India, or Watergate and secret surveillance in the U.S., official "entertainment" expenses and HIV contamination of the blood supply in Japan, or food poisoning in Ireland. Elsewhere, transitional governments seeking distance from or political points against their predecessors have agreed to open the earlier files, and been stuck with the precedent for their own files. Environmentalists, human rights advocates, and anti-corruption crusaders have been in the forefront in almost every country that has taken the freedom of information road. Rarely has the initiative come from government, although the power relationships within governments usually make a crucial difference, as when a congress seeks to restrain executive power, or a reform-oriented executive tries to limit the permanent bureaucracy, or an ombudsperson exercises particular independence and authority.⁵ But whatever the motivations, a specter is haunting bureaucracy, around the world.

The first freedom of information law in the world actually predates both the American and French revolutions. Sweden in 1766 passed the Freedom of the Press Act, which legalized the publication of government documents and provided for public access to them. The reason was not Rousseau but real-politik—the competition between political parties. Sweden enjoyed an extended period of parliamentary rule from 1718 to 1772, and the new majority party in 1766 wanted to see the documents that the previous government had kept secret. Today these rights are built into the Swedish constitution as well as various statutes, and the level of routine openness in Swedish government is probably the highest in the world.⁶

Two hundred years after Sweden, the United States passed its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but for very similar reasons. Even though 1966 was the height of President Johnson's "Great Society" legislation, the U.S. FOIA was based on ten years of hearings in Congress that began with pressure from the Democratic legislative majority to open up the deliberations of the Republican executive branch under President Eisenhower in the 1950's. The U.S. FOIA we know today, with broad coverage and narrow exemptions and powerful court review of government decisions to withhold information, actually is an amended version of the 1966 act, passed in 1974 by the Democratic Congress over a veto by the Republican President Ford. And if there is one word to explain this strong statute, it would be Watergate. Here, we see the dramatic role of scandal in catalyzing open government reforms.⁷