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Power and Conflict in the Age of Transparency pp 181–219Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Sources of Transparency

Information Systems in International Regimes

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Abstract

Transparency is crucial to the effectiveness of international regimes. Indeed, promoting transparency—fostering the acquisition, analysis, and dissemination of regular, prompt, and accurate regimerelevant information—is often one of the most important functions regimes perform. In many regimes, such information underpins efforts to alter state behavior and allows regime members to evaluate past progress in order to redesign the regime to perform better in the future. Yet, for all its nominal importance to regime success, many regimes fail to induce adequate transparency. Both anecdotal incidents—from Iraqi nuclear programs to years of clandestine Soviet whaling—and more systematic evaluations remind us that governments regularly fail to provide the timely and accurate reports mandated by most security, human rights, and environmental treaties. Nor do governments usually allow international organizations or other actors to collect independent information on treaty-relevant behavior. Even regime secretariats that have information often fail to analyze or disseminate it in ways that facilitate regime goals. In short, the necessity for transparency has not been the mother of its invention.

The Graduate School of the University of Oregon generously supported this research through a Faculty Summer Research Fellowship. The author would like to thank Robert Darst, Susan Subak, and three generous anonymous reviewers who provided comments and advice that vastly improved the article. An earlier version of this chapter appeared in International Studies Quarterly 42:1 (March 1998), 109–130.

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Notes

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  1. Ronald B. Mitchell
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Bernard I. Finel Kristin M. Lord

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© 2000 Bernard I. Finel and Kristin M. Lord

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Mitchell, R.B. (2000). Sources of Transparency. In: Finel, B.I., Lord, K.M. (eds) Power and Conflict in the Age of Transparency. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107397_8

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