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The uncertain relationship between transparency and accountability
Open accessAbstract
The concepts of transparency and accountability are closely linked: transparency is supposed to generate accountability. This article questions this widely held assumption. Transparency mobilises the power of shame, yet the shameless may not be vulnerable to public exposure. Truth often fails to lead to justice. After exploring different definitions and dimensions of the two ideas, the more relevant question turns out to be: what kinds of transparency lead to what kinds of accountability, and under what conditions? The article concludes by proposing that the concept can be unpacked in terms of two distinct variants. Transparency can be either ‘clear’ or ‘opaque’, while accountability can be either ‘soft’ or ‘hard’.
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Citations
Cited by
Ananny, M., & Crawford, K. (2018) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/1461444816676645 · Cited by 1,836
Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?
Fox, J. A. (2015) · World Development · doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.03.011 · Cited by 803
Self-citationTowards transparency by design for artificial intelligence
Felzmann, H., Fosch-Villaronga, E., Lutz, C., & Tamò-Larrieux, A. (2020) · Science and Engineering Ethics · doi:10.1007/s11948-020-00276-4 · Cited by 588
Indignation or resignation: The implications of transparency for societal accountability
Bauhr, M., & Grimes, M. (2014) · Governance · doi:10.1111/gove.12033 · Cited by 524
Environmental conflicts and defenders: A global overview
Scheidel, A., Del Bene, D., Liu, J., Navas, G., Mingorría, S., Demaria, F., Avila, S., Roy, B., Ertör, I., Temper, L., et al. (2020) · Global Environmental Change · doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102104 · Cited by 522
Metadata
- Authors
- Fox, J.
- Venue
- Development in Practice
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2007-08
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 4-5
- Pages
- 663-671
- ISSN
- 0961-4524 (ISSN-L)
- 1364-9213
- OpenAlex
- W3122532917
- Cited by
- 859
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 35.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
