Talk – ‘State Secrecy in Liberal Democracy’, Associate Prof. Lydia Morgan (Birmingham), 13 November

Why does state secrecy exist?  What laws and policies enable it?  Is it a problem for liberal democracy and if so, how might it be reformed?  This book grapples with these questions in a context where access to government information should be easy.  Not only can digital information systems gather and disseminate information to the populace quickly and easily, in the UK liberal democracy underpins and instils the value of transparency and statutes provide citizens with mechanisms to demand information.  It is therefore surprising how extensive the system of state secrecy is and how many aspects of the state’s work occur behind closed doors and opaque structures.  What is unclear, is how these legal and political devices can be situated alongside the central ideas of liberal democracy, such as freedom, rationality, legitimacy, accountability and transparency.  State secrecy in Liberal Democracy seeks to understand state secrecy and its place in modern liberal Britain.’