The State

This chapter lays out the history of and reasoning behind corporate secrecy, and describes the trends that have occasionally pushed for greater openness. It then addresses the concerns raised by privatization and by civil society demands for greater corporate social responsibility. It explores the rapidly changing legal regimes concerning corporate transparency in many parts of the world, with special attention to the case of South Africa, one of the few countries that specifically extends its right-to-know law to cover the private sector.

This paper summarizes briefly the main lessons from studies of the Latin American privatization experience. Since the specifics of privatization are much less homogenous than often believed outside of the region, the various country experiences provide many insights on what has been learned over the last 15 years or so as to what works and what does not work with this policy instrument. In particular, this experience shows that it is important to distinguish between the privatization of public services and other industries and services.

Whatever the underlying reason for establishing a transparency regime, after a decade of proliferation of access to information laws, with more than 50 countries now enjoying a legislated right to information, it is clear that the stimulus of both a supply of information and a demand for it is the key to meeting the policy objectives.

This paper examines how different aspects of Nigeria’s history and political and socio-economic make-up encapsulate several of the factors that make attaining and sustaining a viable transparency regime particularly difficult in many countries.

This paper examines the structures that underpin disclosure-based environmental regulation by creating transparency in environmental governance. The authors argue that the term ‘transparency’ must be broadly defined to encompass three essential principles which must be present if citizens are to have a meaningful role in environmental governance.