MANDATED OPENNESS AND HIGHER-EDUCATION GOVERNANCE: POLICY, THEORETICAL, AND ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Openness is a cherished value, if problematical practice, in the governance of public-sector institutions in the United States. Although the nation enjoys a long tradition of espoused commitment to the principle of “open government,” legal guarantees of citizens’ right to information about their government are a relatively modern creation. In the American states, these guarantees prominently take the form of open-meeting and records laws. Often known as sunshine laws, these provisions became widely institutionalized in state statute during the 1960s–70s, when, amidst the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and other widely publicized episodes of corruption at the state level, public con.dence in governmental institutions and leaders plummeted. Although these laws vary in form from one state to the next, they share a similar purpose—to make public bodies more transparent and accountable by providing citizens with reliable access to and knowledge about the conditions and deliberations of those bodies.