Transparency and Ideational Changes: Nordic Openness as a Policy Discourse

Abstract

Transparency has become one of the key concepts of contemporary politics. It is also a newcomer to the political language both in the Anglo-American world and outside. There are, in addition, liberal market notions bound up with the term that are making their way into national political contexts. This is perhaps most apparent in developing countries that are dependent on foreign direct investment and development aid (Relly and Sabharwal 2009). But also countries with a significant institutional history of openness, such as the Nordic countries, are exposed to the new implications of transparency. International policy discourses often tend to take nationalist forms (Schmidt 2002, p. 211), and this chapter explores the policy discourse of ‘Nordic openness’ in Finland. Even if openness is at present discussed as a tradition of Finnish governance, there is an apparent conceptual reframing of institutional practices. Access to government information is no longer merely an issue of democracy and political accountability but is becoming a policy concern to do with (economic) performance. The above discourse is therefore a national variant of the wider transnational policy discourse on transparency.