In the continuing debate about the proposed changes to the freedom-of-information legislation, the impression is given that such changes will serve only the interests of government or State bureaucracy, and always be contrary to those of the public, writes John Waters
This charge is not necessarily well founded and is misleading about the nature of our democracy.
The concepts "transparency" and "accountability" have insinuated themselves into our political consciousness in a manner which prevents them being seen as other than wholly virtuous. We are moralistically informed that "in a democracy" the citizen is entitled to full knowledge about the workings of government and also to have his or her viewpoint constantly taken into account.
But this is a misunderstanding of our form of democracy, for which the word "democracy" is actually a shorthand. We live in a representative democracy, just one of a number of variations on the theme, a system of indirect rule by the majority, in which decisions are taken by a relatively small number of representatives on behalf of the electorate.
Moreover, our system is not one in which representatives are mandated or delegated to vote in a particular way, but one in which we choose parties and people on the basis of generalised philosophies and individual qualities, and appoint them to represent us as they see fit.
In this system, not only is accountability delayed, but transparency is of sometimes dubious benefit. Part of its logic is that government needs to be protected from the caprice of the public will, that the contract between electorate and elected is one of long-term trust, and that an administration requires time in which to prove itself.
Clearly, if a government were constantly prone to the whims of those who - relieved of responsibility for the consequences - sought to pressurise public representatives in whatever direction, this form of democracy might cease to function in the broader public interest.
To an extent this has already happened. We no longer live in a representative democracy, but in a sort of media-driven world, in which the media support a form of undeclared hyper-democracy more concerned with sensation than social responsibility.
The media it is who declare accountability and transparency of unambiguous benefit, these qualities being essential elements of the media's product. Every political journalist worth their salt seeks, every working day, to tell the public something it didn't previously know about what its government is up to.
While such disclosure is always in the interests of the media, it is not necessarily always in the public interest. And the media seek to purvey another product also: political disruption. Since Watergate, it is the ambition of every political journalist to bring down at least one government. Newspapers and current affairs programmes do best at times of political instability and would prosper in a climate of anarchy, but this does not necessarily equate to the public interest.
It is arguable, for example, that, through the strategic use of opinion polling, the media have subverted the nature of our democracy, undermining the buffer between electors and elected. In Ireland, the recent trend for coalition governments - usually involving a somewhat reluctant junior partner, excessively prone to pressure of public opinion - has shifted the emphasis of our democracy away from the ballot box and on to the everyday marketplace of information and public sentiment.
The citizen is rarely told that, in the sort of media-driven world such as we now have, he is often divided against himself. When, of a morning, I pick up a newspaper or turn on a radio, I may be motivated by idle curiosity or disgruntlement to discover something about the workings of government which in the long run I would prefer that I, or others, did not know.
Obvious examples are to do with State security, but there is unlimited putative economic or social information which, however much it may titillate my curiosity, might at the same time, by becoming public knowledge, jeopardise my broader interest as a citizen.
The logic of representative democracy is that it enables a small number of public representatives to function as "adults" in a society which is accordingly freed from day-to-day collective responsibility for the management of its own affairs. It is not especially a problem that the media seeks to subvert this arrangement, since it is the function of the media to seek out information and, where they can, disrupt the plans or business of politicians, to create news. It is right, too, that the public be entitled to protest against government policy.
But equally we need a voice to tell us that our government needs to be protected from the day-to-day consequences of the public mood; and that those who argue for accountability and transparency are, more often than they are acting in the public interest, articulating a vested interest of their own.