The Paradox of Openness: Transparency and Participation in Nordic Cultures of Consensus

The ‘open society’ has become a watchword of liberal democracy and the market system in the modern globalized world. Openness stands for individual opportunity and collective reason, as well as bottom-up empowerment and top-down transparency. It has become a cherished value, despite its vagueness and the connotation of vulnerability that surrounds it. Scandinavia has long considered itself a model of openness, citing traditions of freedom of information and inclusive policy making. This collection of essays traces the conceptual origins, development, and diverse challenges of openness in the Nordic countries and Austria. It examines some of the many paradoxes that openness encounters and the tensions it arouses when it addresses such divergent ends as democratic deliberation and market transactions, freedom of speech and sensitive information, compliant decision making and political and administrative transparency, and consensual procedures and the toleration of dissent.

Contributors are: Ainur Elmgren, Tero Erkkilä, Norbert Götz, Ann-Cathrine Jungar, Johannes Kananen, Lotta Lounasmeri, Carl Marklund, Peter Parycek, Johanna Rainio-Niemi, Judith Schossböck, Ylva Waldemarson, and Tuomas Ylä-Anttila.

Norbert Götz, Ph.D. (2001), Humboldt University Berlin, is Professor of History at the Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University, Stockholm. He has published widely on international relations and civil society, including Deliberative Diplomacy (Republic of Letters, 2011).

Carl Marklund, Ph.D. (2008), European University Institute, is a Post-doctoral researcher in political science at the Centre of Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University. He has published widely on welfare state issues, including All Well in the Welfare State? (NordWel, 2013).