Freedom of Information and Democracy in Australia and Beyond

Bibliographic Data

ID6235043
AuthorsRhys Stubbs (University of Tasmania, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume43
Issue4
Pages667-684
Publication date2008-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAustralian Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1036-1146 • E-ISSN: 1363-030X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10361140802429270
OpenAlexW1966629691
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited20

Freedom of Information laws (FOI) throughout Australia have been routinely studied by law and media scholars. These authors have revealed widespread challenges to functioning FOI regimens, which range from government hostility to public sector restructuring to globalisation. Nevertheless, analysts have only begun to fully appreciate and explore the symbolism of FOI. Access laws are situated at the very heart of state and citizen relations, and they are especially sensitive to broader assumptions about citizenship and democracy. This paper aims to explore this sensitivity through a contextual examination that is as much about democratic theory as it is about access law. Many of the deficiencies outlined by various studies, it is argued, can be best viewed as a cluster of concerns that relate to one major problem - a lack of popular sovereignty. Australian and global democracy must be viewed and conducted in a more generally robust manner in order to strengthen FOI

Citizenship · Democracy · Globalization · Government (linguistics · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Restructuring · Situated · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science · Freedom of Expression and Defamation · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Public Administration · Social Media and Politics

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