Democracy by disclosure: The rise of Technopopulism

Since the mid-1980s, the US Congress and state legislatures have approved scores of new disclosure laws to fight racial discrimination, reduce corruption and improve services. They require corporations and other organizations to produce standardized factual information at regular intervals about health, safety, or environmental threats they create. Instead of simply playing a supporting role in the framing of government rules, information has become an instrument of social policy. In this text Graham argues that these requirements represent a remarkable policy innovation. Enhanced by computer power and the Internet, they are creating a new techno-populism - an optimistic conviction that information itself can improve the lives of ordinary citizens. Graham explains why disclosure has flourished during a time of regulatory retrenchment and why corporations have often supported these raids on proprietary information. However, she sounds a cautionary note. Just as systems of financial disclosure have come under new scrutiny in the wake of Enron´s collapse, systems of social disclosure deserve careful examination.