Special issue: Secrecy in Europe

Summary:

This special issue presents a collection of papers devoted to the study of secrecy in European politics across a range of EU and national settings and policy domains. Academic interest in secret politics – those aspects of public activity intentionally concealed from the public eye – and the governance of secrecy – the political processes and regulatory frameworks governing secret keeping – is growing.

This interest reflects technological, social and political developments that appear to signal the end of privacy and the rapid expansion of political secrecy in European multi-level settings. As a consequence, the tensions between democratic accountability, with its transparency requirements, and political secrecy, which is typically justified on grounds of effectiveness of state action, have become more marked and more politicised.

Engaging with these developments, the contributions to this collection draw on actor- and interest-centred perspectives that focus on actors’ motivations in secret politics; institutional perspectives that focus on contestation over secrecy norms; and organisational perspectives that emphasise the diversity of secrecy cultures. Further research will benefit from paying special attention to a diverse range of inter-institutional and inter-organisational secrecy settings; to political contestation over secrecy and the regulatory regimes that govern it; and to the refashioning of public-private secrecy architectures.

Articles in this issue:

+ Secrecy in Europe | Berthold Rittberger & Klaus H. Goetz
+ Second order secrecy and Europe’s legality mosaics | Deirdre Curtin
+ Courts and the politics of secrecy: national security, human rights and the importance of supranational oversight | Federico Fabbrini
+ The economy of secrecy: security, information control, and EU‒US relations | Thierry Balzacq & Benjamin Puybareau
+ Secrecy and the making of CFSP | Mai’a K. Davis Cross
+ Contestation and co-optation: why secrecy in EU external relations varies | Guri Rosén
+ Political secrecy in Europe: crisis management and crisis exploitation | Christian Kreuder-Sonnen
+ Information sharing, secrecy and trust among law enforcement and secret service institutions in the European Union | Hartmut Aden
+ Ambient accountability: intelligence services in Europe and the decline of state secrecy | Richard J. Aldrich & Daniela Richterova
+ Explaining variation and change in supervisory confidentiality in the European Union | Christopher Gandrud & Mark Hallerberg
+ Leaking, leak prevention, and decoupling in public administrations: the case of the European Commission | Ronny Patz