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ePaper created 2015-12-01, 11:32:17 | version 1.43.00
23 IN FOCUS fairness. In both spheres, transparency has an ethical di- mension and describes an ideal state which, in practice, is never completely attainable. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the demand for transparency was confined to increasing the clarity of political decisions. Today, however, it operates in a much more complex field of interdependencies. The majority of people would surely agree that the decisions taken by local, regional or national parliamentary assemblies should be published. But how many of us would want to be a ‘transparent citizen’, with full disclosure of our per- sonal affairs to the advertising industry or internet giants? And when it comes to politicians and industry leaders, where should the limits lie? To what extent should their lives be on public display? What about their privacy – where does it begin? What should they be allowed to con- ceal from the media and the public? Not a cure-all solution, but a source of new conflicts The demand for transparency is not a cure-all, then. On the contrary, it can create new conflicts within society. One of the pioneers of transparency as a core concept in politics, the economy and society was the English philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham, who was born in 1748, one year before the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and died in 1832, the same year as Goethe. Bentham’s interest in transparency was not motivated by a desire to promote the freedom of the individual. On the contrary, he saw it as a way of controlling people’s behaviour non-violently. So he designed prisons built of glass and iron, making them so transparent that the in- mates had to act as though they were being watched at all times. He called his model of transparent imprisonment – which deprived inmates of every shred of privacy – the Panopticon. Many prisons were constructed on the basis of Bentham’s designs, albeit with various modifications; one example is the star-shaped prison in the Berlin suburb of Moabit, built in 1880, part of which is still in use today. The design enables guards stationed in the centre of the star to keep watch over the various wings of the prison with a minimum number of staff. In line with Bentham’s ideas, civil servants and mem- bers of parliament, too, should always make their de- cisions under the watchful eye of the public. And just as Bentham’s concepts have been channelled into many pris- ons’ design, so too has his concept of transparent power influenced architecture in Western Europe. The » English philosopher Jeremy Bentham is re- garded as a pioneer of the concept of transparency in politics and society. He saw it primarily as a means of changing people’s behaviour, and set out his ideas in ‘Panopticon’, which was published in 1791. Curbing corruption Many countries have started to combat bribery and corruption in recent years, as studies by the World Bank show. Rwanda and Georgia in particular have achieved notable successes. Rwanda Thanks to its stringent anti-corruption policies in almost every area of public life, Rwanda is performing well compared with many other countries. This helps to attract foreign investment. Georgia In less than a decade, Georgia has become a model of good practice in corruption control. Among other things, the country’s notoriously corrupt traffic police has been replaced with a new patrol service. Sources: International Budget Partnership, OECD, United Nations Development Programme, World Bank, Transparency International Corruption control on a scale from -2.5 to +2.5 2003 2008 2013 TOP 5 – the most transparent multinational companies Corporate transparency was assessed against 10 criteria, including where companies pay taxes. Germany’s top company – BASF – ranks seventh. 0.7 0.35 -0.35 -0.7 0 200320082013