Access Thin and Access Rich

I was in Atlanta, Georgia,  last week at the Carter Center to attend the 'International  Conference on the Right to Public Information'. The Carter Center, you must know, is the brainchild of former US President Jimmy Carter. The global 'Right to Information' community was fully mobilized for the event. It was an opportunity to talk about the achievements of that community in the last decade or so --- pretty solid and impressive -- and to agree on the challenges that remain. I presented the World Bank perspective on Access to Information as an approach to development: citizen participation, the empowerment of ordinary citizens as well as transparency and accountability in governance. My colleague Marcos Mendiburu of the World Bank Institute co-authored the presentation.

I came away from Atlanta impressed by President Carter - he is truly impressive - and the work of the Carter Center, as well as the seriousness and intensity of the Right to Information community. What follows is a point I made at the closing plenary. One of the challenges we face in international development is how new areas of focus get intensely technocratic, the business of specialists who drill into the minutiae of laws, regulations, technical processes, global norms and so on. This is often necessary and can be a real strength. For instance, I met a lot of lawyers and technical specialists of different kinds at the conference and it was a pleasure to learn from them. But it can also be a weakness.

In Atlanta I noticed three weaknesses. First, there was an insufficient realization of the fact that an effective access to information regime in any country is a public sphere phenomenon that requires the support of other constitutive elements of a democratic public sphere: the media system, engaged civil society and a public political culture that privileges free and open debate and discussion based on free flow of information. My sense is that there is right now an over reliance on getting Freedom of Information laws passed. Second, the idea of access to information as a fundamental right is something that activists assert passionately but there is very little evidence that this powerful norm is anchored in public opinion in most countries. It is imported through laws and treaties or even constitutional provisions that only narrow elites care about. I spoke to several technical experts at the meeting who did not appear worried about this even when colleagues at the conference presented opinion polls showing serious public disconnect (like less than 2 per cent of citizens in a couple of countries agreeing that access to information is a right). Third, with notable exceptions like India and Honduras, there is scant evidence that ordinary citizens know about and use access to information laws in any serious way. Again, some of the experts I spoke to were not overly worried.

All this bothered me, and I promised to work with the Carter Center on these public engagement issues. For, Access Thin - the business of narrow elites - is problematic. Without Access Rich - the preoccupation of ordinary citizens with the core norms anchored securely in public opinion - is what will deliver the good governance benefits that the Right to Information community likes to claim for its work. Access Rich is also the only way to prevent the powerful from rolling back the gains that have been made. The powerful always prefer opacity...if they can get away with. The surest protection for the gains of an access to information regime is the power of public opinion. Laws can be neutered in implementation - or lack of implementation.

Let me know what you think.

So long!