Secrecy

Governing Through Transparency: Investigating the New Access to Information Regime in Canada

This paper examines the state of Canada’s federal access to information (ATI) regime. Drawing from literature on government transparency, we conceptualize Bill C-58 and the problems it proposes to address as a form of policy discordance. We assess …

Freedom of Information Research and Cultural Studies: A Subterranean Affinity

Introducing the idea of *subterranean affinity*, this article explores how methodological use of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests can contribute to the field of cultural studies. Contributing to literatures on transparency and secrecy, we …

Freedom of Information and Social Science Research Design

This multidisciplinary volume demonstrates how Freedom of Information (FOI) law and processes can contribute to social science research design across sociology, criminology, political science, anthropology, journalism and education. Comparing the use …

The Police Foundation’s Rise: Implications of Public Policing’s Dark Money

A new kind of organization has emerged in public policing across the United States and Canada - the 'police foundation'. The foundation's private, nonprofit legal status allows it to engage in private fundraising activities that police, as public …

Theorizing Freedom of Information: The Live Archive, Obfuscation, and Actor-Network Theory

Freedom of information (FOI) is typically analyzed as a law and legal discourse. In sociology, criminology, and socio-legal studies, FOI is also increasingly used as a method to generate disclosures about inside government practices. Absent from this …

Hannah Arendt and the Art of Secrecy; Or, the Fog of Cobra Mist

Using Hannah Arendt as our guide, we examine the imperfect and at times curious mechanisms through which state projects enact an aura of secrecy and deception. To date, International Political Sociology (IPS) has paid strikingly little attention to …

Deception Declassified: The Social Organisation of Cover Storying in a Secret Intelligence Operation

This article asks why and how governments keep secrets from publics, journalists and politicians using the strategy of ‘cover storying’. To develop a theory of cover storying, insights are drawn from political sociologies of state secrecy and from …

High Policing and Access to Information

Brodeur’s concept of high policing is now a staple in sociology and criminology. While scholars have added to debates about high policing by focusing on private provision and pluralization, methodological concerns related to high policing remain …