The dictatorship of transparency?

This week was marked by the managed release of US diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks in a number of major European newspapers — a development which has taught us among other things that the head of the Spanish government stays up late but perhaps not quite as late as his Italian counterpart, and that Germany has a “Teflon” chancellor while France has a “thin-skinned” president. But perhaps we could have deduced most of this without being told.

The response to the disclosures has been more interesting. Politicians from around the world competed to find extra stern expressions of condemnation, while reactions in the media and among the general public were more mixed. Press commentators were torn between their enthusiasm for the vast source of free information and their irritation at its closely managed release.

On a more general level, people wondered about the real motives of the organisation co-founded by Julian Assange. Doubts were expressed about its contribution to the cause of world peace. Could diplomacy really be effective if there were no secrets? Would the disclosure simply make governments even more secretive? The "dictatorship of transparency" was warned that "some things should be disclosed to the public." In short, the emperor should not walk around in the buff, and no one should say he does.

At the same time, many in the press were delighted. Cablegate, we were told, was a victory for transparency, which is a crucial requirement for democracy; citizens have a right to know everything about the backroom dealings of their leaders and governments. As The Economist puts it, "Organisations such as WikiLeaks … may be the best we can hope for in the way of promoting the climate of transparency and accountability necessary for authentically liberal democracy." In other words: the emperor should go about without clothes, and everyone should make sure that he does.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, expressions of concern were more common in Mediterranean cultures, while Northern Europeans tended to be more enthusiastic. In the long term, Cablegate is unlikely to create a shift in global geopolitics, but it does have the merit of raising the issue of transparency, and debate on government secrecy which the Internet has made increasingly problematic.