Freedom of Information and the Developing World ：The Citizen, the State and Models of Openness ( Chandos Information Professional Series )

Publication subTitle ：The Citizen, the State and Models of Openness

Publication series ：Chandos Information Professional Series

Author： Darch Colin;Underwood Peter G

Publisher： Elsevier Science‎

Publication year： 2009

E-ISBN: 9781780630205

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9781843341994

P-ISBN(Hardback): 9781843341994

Subject： G25 Library Science

Keyword：信息与知识传播

Language： ENG

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Description

Rather than simply summarising the state of play in African countries and elsewhere, Freedom of Information and the Developing World identifies and makes explicit the assumptions about the citizen’s relationship to the state that lie beneath Freedom of Information (FoI) discourse. The book goes on to test them against the reality of the pervasive politics of patronage that characterise much of African practice.

Develops a discourse about the concept of FoI
Discussion of the human rights claim appropriates the concepts of Hohfeldian analysis for more radical purposes in support of the idea that the state has a duty to implement FoI practices

Chapter

Cover

Freedom of Information and the Developing World: The citizen, the state and models of openness

Contents

List of figures and tables

About the authors

Acknowledgements

List of acronyms and abbreviations

1 Introduction

2 Developing countries and freedom of information

The claims for freedom of information

Freedom of information and economic development

Freedom of information and its impact on democratic practice

Freedom of information and the elimination of corruption

The protection of other rights

3 The diffusion problem and the semantic shift

Introduction: the dynamic of diffusion

The diffusion of social and legal norms

Historicising freedom of information: Anders Chydenius and the Swedish Age of Liberty

Historicising freedom of information: Article 19 and semantic shift

Information access rights in the wider context

4 Compliance and the impulse to secrecy

Bureaucracy, information and power

Sociological accounts of bureaucracy

Surveillance and privacy

Politicians, bureaucracy and ignorance

Material and ideological pre-conditions

Are models of compliance useful?

Covering the tracks: pre-emptive destruction

5 Freedom of information as a human right

The ‘rights’ nature of access to information

The object of the freedom of information claim

Characteristics of human rights

Form and function in a freedom of information right

Ideology and struggle in rights discourse

The Claude Reyes case: a turning point?

The state’s duty to respect, protect and fulfil

6 Struggles for freedom of information in countries in transition

The relationship between access rights and other virtues

The Philippines: case law and access to information

Transparency to stimulate investment: Guangzhou and Shanghai

Freedom of information in a different America: Guatemala, Bolivia and Brazil

Russia: access rights in a transitional authoritarian society

Conclusion

7 Struggles for freedom of information in Africa

Zimbabwe: through the looking glass

A prolonged struggle: secrecy and corruption in Nigeria

Oil, secrecy and law in Angola

Mozambique: the development of ‘informal’ access rights

South Africa: an incomplete transformation

African countries are not ‘basket cases’

8 From adversarialism to FoI 2.0

The way we live now

Direct action against authoritarian states

Developing a culture of access: ‘FoI 2.0’

Information warfare as a threat to FoI 2.0

List of sources

Index