WHAT THEY ARE SAYING

Tom Daschle, Former Senate Majority Leader: “The authors have done us all a good service by offering sound analysis and ideas on how to make public policy transparent and accessible for all citizens. As the country heads into the 21st century, more transparent governance is just what we need.”

Paul Starr, reviewing the book in The American Prospect of May 20, 2007:
“Drawing on 18 case studies, Full Disclosure provides a wide-ranging and systematic analysis of targeted transparency in the United States (with some additional discussion of global mechanisms)....The book makes two key contributions: It clarifies the factors that determine whether policies are effective and it suggests that transparency measures are now entering a new phase when they can be even more useful to the public than in the past.”

Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico: “Governmental transparency efforts inform the public about additives in the food we eat, dangerous criminals in our neighborhoods, and the financial support of our political leaders. "Full Disclosure" offers several important lessons that will help give citizens easier access to vital information through the creation of better, more meaningful transparency policies.”

Lee Drutman, reviewing the book in the San Francisco Chronicle, April 16, 2007: “Full Disclosure ought to make citizens wise to the tricks that commonly turn transparency policies into little more than symbolism.…Fung, Graham and Weil seem to be warning that even with popular information and the means of acquiring it, farce and tragedy remain acute dangers absent a meaningful way to act on that information.”

Brian J.  Cook reviewing the book in the Dec. 2007 issue of Perpsectives on Politics: "This rich, carefully researched, well balanced, and readily accessible study shows us that good governance, with legislators at the local, state, or national levels in the lead, is surely difficult but far from unattainable. This is hard-nosed scholarship demonstrating, as the authors themselves discovered, that pragmatism about both policy expectations and policy results should prevail among political leaders and citizens alike."

Lisa Blomgren Bingham, writing in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (Winter 2008): "Fung, Graham, and Weil make a major contribution to our understanding of targeted transparency as a policy....By envisioning the future of disclosure as decentralized, information technology-driven, dynamic, and interactive "collaborative transparency," this work advances the field and will have a substantial impact on future research...This is an important piece of work, and one of broad interest to those in policy analysis and management, because it provides a comprehensive framework for understanding and evaluating a significant public policy tool. However its larger signifcance is for governance....Fung, Graham, and Weil have provided a compendium and reference resource for thinking about how to structure transparency in the new governance..."

Jay P. Shimshack, writing in Political Science Quarterly: "It is fantastically researched and excellently written. While it does not answer every important question about transparency, it adeptly answers many critical ones. I suspect it is destined to become the definitive book in the area, and I recommend it to academics commencing or conducting disclosure research, policymakers considering or refining information programs, and decision makers concerned about the impact of transparency on the organizational
bottom line. Further, since the book is an accessible and relatively entertaining case study of politics, policy, and governance, it should appeal to the general reader interested in democracy in action.