• 1  See for instance J. Best, 2005; C. Hood & D. Heald, 2006; R. M. Bushman, J. D. Piotroski & A. J. S (...)

1Paradoxically, it is at a time when transparency is hailed as a key to good governance and economic efficiency, and when national states and transnational agencies are implementing new laws to allow citizens broader access to information, that a series of crises and scandals, sometimes revealed by whistle-blowers, have revealed the extent to which use of the concept can be problematic and, perhaps, even fraught. Before the global financial crisis of 2008, academic literature had already started questioning the rationale behind the adoption of the word “transparency” by the world of corporate finance. In the wake of freedom of information acts, various authors had also started to refine analytical approaches in order to examine what was at stake behind the rapid spread of the concept.1

• 2  The number of articles published on transparency is growing fast. For this introduction we did not (...)

2In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, which has shaken the banking sector and rocked citizens confidence in institutions, interest in transparency has grown substantially. Since Jeremy Bentham’s first introduction of the word into the language in 1789, few societal debates have sparked so much concern across a variety of disciplines, beyond the traditional remit of economics and politics, and using new approaches and methodologies. As the debate is still developing, it is too early to identify major new directions or draw preliminary conclusions. It is likely, however, that the current developments in critical analysis and reappraisals of the concept of transparency — and others like accountability, openness or privacy — will be instrumental in providing an effective response to the new challenges brought about by globalisation and pave the way to a more robust relationship between nations, markets and citizens.2

• 3  See, however, T. C. Irwin, 2013; S. Baume, 2015.

3One striking fact has emerged from the current debates: the lack of historical reflection about the development of the concept of transparency, both as a principle and as a practice.3 True, the example of the French Revolution of 1789, which saw a so-called absolute monarchy transformed overnight into a fully-fledged constitutional regime, with public political debates, parliamentary commissions and published reports, and a declaration of the rights of the man that introduced the principle of national sovereignty, government accountability and freedom of expression, may give the impression that the transition from Ancien Régime to the Modern World was very simple, and that the experience was easily transferable to other countries. In this respect, implementation of efficient and sustainable modern institutions does not appear to be the product of specific historical experiences. Rather, at a level of development, or under certain circumstances, it would seem the inevitable outcome of a conflict-in-waiting between a ruler and self-perpetuating elites, and the people, and which could be solved by applying an available roadmap. In both cases, the question remains whether the origins of societal and political change among European polities were endogenous or exogenous, or, as seems more plausible, a mix of both.

• 4  P. O’Brien, 2011.
• 5  R. Torres Sánchez, 2007, 2015.
• 6  D. Coffman, 2013.

4Neo-institutionalist literature, with its emphasis on the Glorious Revolution, has highlighted the role of politics in the development of efficient institutions conducive to efficient financial markets and economic growth. In the last two decades, however, the trend has been to challenge this “big-bang theory”. Historians have emphasized the extent to which the English experience was essentially exceptional and, to an extent, the results of fortuitous events.4 New research on the Fiscal-Military state has suggested that polities across Europe were confronted by with problems of a similar nature.5 In the case of England, new work has also demonstrated that the success of the political, fiscal and religious settlement of 1688 was dependent on prior changes that had already occurred during the English Civil Wars.6

• 7  M. Dincecco, 2013.

5In other words, if various models of institutions or agencies did exist and circulated in early-modern Europe, unlike goods they could not or would not be simply exported and adopted by polities. While Jacques Necker sought to emulate the English model of government he admired so much, especially the link between publishing of accounts and public credit, most revolutionaries remained deeply critical of the British constitution. For Britain had recently had experienced military defeat, was seriously in debt and exposed to radical criticism at home. The French sought to establish a universal model of society and government, which the Revolutionary and Napoleonic armies soon imposed upon the monarchies they toppled. While it has been argued that the political modernisation of nineteenth-century Europe was a consequence of exogenous factors, one can also observe that if the seed for future developments was planted, the transition to Modernity was far from linear, and the path to transparency a bumpy one, and may not be over yet.7

• 8  I thank both these institutions for their financial help. Support from The Economic and Social Res (...)

7The articles published in this special issue proceed from a workshop which took place at the University of Reading in April 2014, funded by the Economic and Social Research Centre (ESRC, UK), with the support of the Centre de Recherches Historiques at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (CRH-EHESS).8 A total of nine experts on six Old Regime European polities (France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Dutch Provinces, the Kingdom of Naples and Sweden) debated the theme “The Excesses of the State: administrative control or political transparency in seventeenth to nineteenth century Europe?” The result is a fascinating voyage through time and space which explores the issues of control and communication in various early-modern European polities. The purpose of this introduction is not to summarize the content of each contribution — as they speak for themselves — but to open a brief discussion on the terminology and the methodology deployed, as well as to propose some historical reflection about fiscal control and accountability before the events in France in 1789.

• 9  P. Birkinshaw, 2006.

8Transparency is a catch-all-phrase that has spread like wildfire in the past two decades. As a substantive, it describes a moral value — like happiness — which seems highly desirable, in contrast to opacity or secrecy. In this respect, transparency can be considered a political principle and, even, a natural human right.9 Although the word transparency was not to be found in the vocabulary of moral and political philosophy prior to 1789, the very idea pervaded early-modern society, alongside the development of the state itself, in particular the power to levy tax. At the height of a major financial crisis in France which brought about the collapse of the Absolute monarchy, the principle of fiscal accountability took its place in the Declaration of the rights of the man and the citizen of 1789. Article 14 empowered the newly-created citizen to “decide either personally or by their representative, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes”.

• 10  J. Swann & J. Félix, 2008.

10As we will see below, it is important to recognise these distinctions to avoid confusion when using concepts such as representation, accountability, publicity, control, transparency, and also for analysing their discursive relationship with antonyms like secrecy, opacity, mystery. This can be exemplified by the exchanges between the Parlement of Paris and the French king. In the numerous fiscal remonstrances they addressed to Louis XV during the dramatic Seven Years War (1756-1763), the Parisian magistrates drew upon the judicial vocabulary of the time to articulate requests for the government to justify the necessity and destination of new revenue.10 Of course, it is questionable whether the introduction of formal procedures to legitimate fiscal policy without openly challenging royal authority was workable within absolute monarchies. On the other hand, it may seem simplistic to assume that a change of paradigm as radical as the French Revolution could be spontaneous and its principles abolish societal tensions arising from the administration of human affairs.

• 11  G. d’Audiffret, 1850, p. 7. This is a translation of De la Comptabilité publique et de la Cour des (...)

11Well into the nineteenth century, these questions still remained unresolved and they continued to preoccupy many, like the marquis d’Audiffret (1787-1878) in his brochure On Public Accountability and the Court of Accounts of France (1850). Interestingly, the father of modern public accounting in France never used the word “transparency” in his works. He still referred to the vocabulary of the Enlightenment and its concept of light. In the same way as Louis Brandeis, later, famously wrote about America that “sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant”, d’Audiffret considered the concept of “light” as one of the cornerstones of social harmony and political freedom. “Order and light”, he wrote, “are the primary laws of that eternal harmony which we admire in Divine creation… Political systems in the present day have to accomplish that twofold condition required by the times, which brings the prerogative of sovereign power into harmony with the guarantees of rational freedom. These are the main pillars of every state which is established on the basis of national representation”.11

• 12  G. d’Audiffret, 1850, p. 8.

12Half a century after the fall of the Bastille, the problem for d’Audiffret (he started his career as a civil servant under the Bourbon Restoration and became président de la Cour des Comptes) was not to make a plea in favour of individual and political rights. They were de facto granted by the Charter of the Constitutional monarchy (1814), although with qualifications. His main purpose was to ensure that the modern world could deliver on its promises, in particular by introducing a technique capable of implementing accountability. D’Audiffret argued that what he called “public accountability” should be envisaged as “a method and an analytical arrangement” to throw light on fiscal and political systems, and claimed that this concept, envisaged as a tool for good governance, was “novel in our own country, and till now almost unknown in Europe”.12 Indeed, when d’Audiffret published the first edition of his book, the model of absolute monarchies dominated in continental Europe and accountability in newly-established parliamentary regimes remained problematic.

• 13  D. Heald, 2006.

14With this distinction in mind, Heald has mobilised the theory of public choice to refine the concept of transparency. He has proposed a useful analytical model that identifies four varieties of transparency, or types of dynamic relationships between societal actors. They can be grouped in two pairs. The first pair of actors are organised in a vertical relationship where transparency can be either upwards (i.e., a population, as the principal, looking up at the activity of an agent) or downwards (for instance, when government seek to acquire knowledge about what is happening below). The second pair of actors is organised in a horizontal relationship where transparency can be inwards (i.e., the opportunity for outsiders to look at the activities of an organisation) or outwards (i.e., a subordinate or agent can observe what is happening outside the organisation). Finally, Heald’s model introduces a crucial element — timing — which adds another important distinction in the forms of transparency or accountability, depending on whether information is disclosed in real time or in retrospect.13

• 14  J. Israel, 2008.
• 15  N. Henshall, 1992.

16Drawing a distinction between transparency as a right and an instrument makes it possible to separate the political dimension of accountability, which is rooted in the philosophy of natural rights, and tools for accountability which may have existed in various forms at different times in the early-modern era. In this respect, transparency can be studied as a historical object which transcends the traditional divide between periods and polities. Indeed, as Feenstra’s and Loiseau’s contributions respectively on the province of Groenigen in the Dutch provinces and the French provincial estates remind us, absolute and limited polities were often composite and decentralised states before 1789. Contrasting principle and practice also fits well with recent developments in the history of intellectual ideas. In his work on the Enlightenment, Jonathan Israel has demonstrated the existence of a radical strand within the Enlightenment.14 Inevitably, this has raised renewed interest in the more moderate philosophers, the likes of Voltaire for instance, and the policies conducted by familiar figures such as Frederick the Great, Gustav III, or Joseph II, usually associated with domestic reform and enlightened despotism. The distinction between accountability in principle and in practice makes even greater sense in the context of revisionist approaches to the concept of absolutism, which a majority of historians reject as not applicable in practice once policies are properly investigated.15

• 16  J. Soll, 2011. On administrative and accountability see also J. F. Bosher, 1970 and M.-L. Legay, 2 (...)

17In trying to identify the historical origins of contemporary transparency, Christopher Hood reminds us that publishing information — and one could add the potential for endogenous developments — can be situated in the traditional doctrine that government should operate according to fixed and predictable rules. Fiscal historians have long mentioned the importance of sir George Downing’s introduction of the payment “in course” in the late seventeenth century, whereby the state’s expenditures were disbursed according to a clear calendar. By contrast, at the same time France used to pay its expenditure through assignations on its fiscal agents, a costly system prone to undue delays, favouritism, and distrust and, in the end, default. C. Hood adds that if traditional forms of publicity are usually associated with representative regimes, they can also be found in less liberal regimes, as part of a broader logic of organisational and political power within the executive government. With its reliance on patronage to promote his policy and use of his network of clients to gather vital information, Colbert is certainly the archetype of the minister capable of playing the rules of the game and managing the system, within its limits, to its best.16

• 17  F. von Hertzberg, 1786, p. 72.

18A century later, in another context, the political works of Count Friedrich von Hertzberg (1725-1795), who was one of Frederick II’s principal advisers, shows the extent to which issues of publicity mattered in absolute regimes. In his annual address to the Berlin Academy to celebrate his master’s birthday (26 January), Hertzberg always included a Table of the great sums that His Majesty has distributed freely during the course of this year… for the advancement of agriculture and manufactures, and in general for the well-being of his subjects. Interestingly enough, Hertzberg felt compelled to justify such disclosure of the arcana imperii. He confessed: “I do not think I am causing any harm to the State, nor betraying its secrets, by publishing facts notorious at home, and by making better known its goodness, strength, and vigour. It is more and more admitted that great policy does not consist in the mystery with which government covered itself, but that those who act openly, with publicity and frankness, win a lot more the confidence of its subjects and neighbours”.17

• 18  M. Fogel, 1989.
• 19  J. Félix, 2013.

19Of course, publicity of this kind can be misleading. It falls into a category that has been labelled “policy of admiration” and considered typical of the ceremonies of communication orchestrated by governments in absolute regimes, by contrast to the more effective publicity and accountability of limited monarchies.18 Such contrasts are exemplified in Rafael Torres Sánchez’s analysis of king Carlos III’s paternalistic discourse to justify the need to levy new taxes to fund the American War, a communication strategy which was nullified by the inability of the Spanish administration to actually monitor the sums outstanding in the hands of local tax receivers. In the case of France, a similar tension arose when Jacques Necker published his famous Compte rendu au roi (1781), arguably a public justification of the need to levy taxes to service loans, while Louis XVI’s paternalist fiscal discourse alluded to the rise of taxation on social grounds and fear of political opposition from the elites.19

• 20  F. von Hertzberg, 1786, p. 61.

20Like many administrators in the aftermath of Montesquieu’s influential Spirit of the Laws (1748), one of Hertzberg’s avowed aims was also to contribute to the wider debate about the relative and respective strengths, characteristics and benefits of European polities. For Hertzberg argued that official publications of Frederic II’s use of monies gave “new proofs that a monarchical government is and can be excellent, and can make for the public good arrangements which are far superior to those entailed in the nature of republican governments”. Curiously, Hertzberg’s ideas on publicising government policy did not lead him to support the introduction of a modern political order in Prussia, which he considered not workable in the sort of monarchy he had in mind. In his view, publicity was essentially a superior technique of government. In his condemnation of “absolute secrecy”, he attacked less a principle than the consequences of an ill-conceived method of administration which had the potential for introducing new laws based on uncertain or dubious grounds.20 A similar argument was used by French reformers in the early eighteenth century who called on the king’s finance ministers to stop adopting secret advice and harmful projects submitted by interested parties. Instead, they asked for the establishment of new institutions to scrutinize manuscript memoirs relating to matters of the state’s administration by the means of publication. In this model, the ultimate decision on the memoranda would belong to specific institutions, which would advise the minister, or would be simply left to public opinion via the mechanics of the public sphere.

• 21  J. Postlethwayt, 1759; F. Forbonnais, 1758; J. Hoppit, 2002; J. Félix, 1999.
• 22  C. Davenant, 1695; his figures were reproduced and discussed by F. Véron de Forbonnais, 1758.
• 23  N. Desmaretz, n.p., n.d.

22When it comes to fiscal issues, which were, with religion, a central source of contention in the early-modern period, assessing the level of actual and effective accountability among the various European polities is not a straightforward exercise. At this point, it is important to observe that for a long period of time access to a coherent body of knowledge about state finances was simply impossible for the multitude. The first financial histories which were meant for the instruction of the public appeared only in the 1750s, with the respective work of Postlethwayth in England and Forbonnais in France.21 This does not mean that information on this important issue was absolutely existent. In the tradition of William Petty’s political arithmetic, Charles Davenant published macro-economic data about the revenue, wealth and population of England, the Netherlands and France in the late seventeenth century.22 In 1715, French finance minister Desmaretz published a very detailed account of his fiscal policy under the late Louis XIV and in 1720, as John Law’s system was starting to fall part, the government made public an account of the state of the debts and their progressive reduction under the Regency.23

• 24  J.-M. Terray, n.p., n.d. [1775]; J. Félix, 2013.

23True, unlike in Britain, public disclosure in France of fiscal documents was the exception rather than the norm. Yet, catalogues of national libraries and special collections reveal that French fiscal documents were printed from time to time, and sometimes leaked by the government, probably with political intent. For instance, a relatively accurate French budget was published in the Netherlands in 1749 and an account from finance minister Terray to Louis XVI in 1774 was immediately published, although not with the fiscal administration blueprint.24 It seems, however, that such in-roads in the secrecy of fiscal matters were opportunist responses to circumstances rather than a proper reflexion on the role of publicity and a real commitment to introduce it within royal institutions. In 1787, at the height of a major fiscal and political crisis, and six years after Necker’s official publication, discussion within the Royal Council opposed ministers on the necessity of disclosing financial accounts and debated whether accounts ought to be made public every three or five years.

• 25  J. Black, 1987.

25Even in Britain, where the king’s subjects traditionally enjoyed freedom of the press, a right confirmed in the Bill of Rights (1689), the increase in the volume of information, also noticeable in the eighteenth century, was a cause for some concern. In the 1730s and 1740s, ministers were concerned by the reporting — or rather the misreporting with political intent — of speeches in the Commons which, at the time, were not available to the wider public. In 1742, a publication venture offered to publish the speeches of the Commons from Queen Anne’s accession in the form of books, and not magazines, and also promised to bring them up to the present. The printer ended up in prison while a variety of measures were taken to limit freedom of the press on reporting parliamentary speeches. It must be said that repression found little political support and was loosely implemented.25 In the mid-1750s, Edmund Burke’s take-over of the Annual Register certainly filled a vacuum and responded to a public demand for news and information which, in Britain as in France, was traditionally accessible only to a relatively small elite.

• 26  G. Michener & K. Bersch, 2013.

26As Hertzberg rightly pointed out, declarations and edicts were the traditional method for governments to disclose information to the public. According to the famous German geographer Gottfried Achenwall, Britain and France stood out in Europe in terms of the amount of fiscal information they made available by such means. The true problem, observed Achenwall, was the sheer difficulty of making sense of the existing information. Indeed, to meet its objectives, fiscal publicity had to present information or data in a credible and convenient way that fostered inferability.26 In the same way as recent debates have queried the readability of the balance sheets of contemporary central banks, the information disclosed in the eighteenth century was not always easy to interpret. For instance, in Burke’s issues of the Annual Register, Parliamentary budgetary decisions (ways and means) are reported as a list of figures. Since volumes appeared only once a year, publicity was in retrospect, particularly during the Seven Years War when the publication of annual issues was systematically delayed. In effect, it would take almost another half-century, up until 1802, before the Treasury submitted a full and legible budget to the House of Commons.

• 27  J. Félix, 1999.
• 28  J.-P. Rousselot de Surgy, 1783-1784.
• 29  G. Achenwall, 1774.

27The case of France was different but not dissimilar. Here too fiscal information was available. Decisions on fiscal and credit policy were officially published in royal edicts which were registered by courts of justice. In 1768, the finance minister L’Averdy warned Louis XV that the public had learnt to count so well that it predicted default as inevitable.27 But information remained so unprecise that experts called upon by government for their advice on fiscal strategy could not rely on accurate data to defend their views or, worse, proposed policies were simply not viable once figures were added. As a matter of fact, published information was not easy to understand either. It was certainly impenetrable to potential foreign investors in the French funds who could not read the language. With this in mind, Achenwall set himself the task of writing for his German compatriots a commentary of abbé Terray’s edict of November 1771, an official document in which the contrôleur général clarified the situation of French finances after his famous 1770’s default. Making sense of the state of French finances, as set out at length in the edict, was truly impossible as only specialists could decipher its technical vocabulary. Incidentally, this is an indication that Terray’s purpose was to establish a line of communication with professional financiers and not trying to appeal to a wider audience of investors. In any case, the relatively clear articles of the volumes of the Encyclopédie méthodique specifically devoted to finances only appeared in 1783.28 In the meantime, the average German reader would find no help in current language dictionaries which offered neither translation nor explanation of financial vocabulary. Achenwall argued, however, that once the meaning of the vocabulary was clarified the edict gave a fairly good idea about the actual resources of France.29

• 30  M. Fenster, 2015.
• 31  Between 1787 and 1789 Calonne and Necker attacked each other in a series of publications where the (...)

28Recent analyses of transparency which draw upon theories of communication emphasize the need to go beyond the question of the quality of the information disclosed to examine publicity in relation to the strategies of the provider, the recipient’s reactions and the role of the media.30 One of the problems with Necker’s publication on the state of French finance in 1781 was certainly the scarcity of fiscal data. This made his fiscal policy and his Compte rendu the subject of vicious attacks about his abilities and hidden agenda. As his successor and arch-enemy Calonne realised when he attacked Necker’s figures in an opening speech to the Assembly of Notables (1787), disagreement over figures could not properly be addressed and reputation ascertained without disclosing more information in the public sphere.31 This suggests — as Necker argued in 1781 — that once forms of publicity are part of government policy on communication with the public, there is no easy way-out. To an extent, this explains why the history of transparency is not a linear one.

• 32  British Library, Additionnai Manuscripts 74100, Aperçu de la Balance du Commerce de la France, Ann (...)
• 33  W. Playfair, 2005.

32There also existed outside of the state apparatus a market for private consumption of fiscal information. A variety of publishing initiatives appeared in response to questions about the resources and relative strengths of states. From the 1760s, the German geographer Anton Bsching started gathering data about populations, size of the armies and navies, and revenue of European states, which he published and revised in successive editions of his Magazin. The scientific revolution assisted the invention of non-verbal ways for communicating and comparing quantitative data. Between 1786 and 1789, French ministers started assembling large tables with data that provided a detailed and synoptic view of the French population, the king’s expenditure and revenue, colonial trade, etc. In 1789, the deputies of the French assembled to deal with the deficit and the debt were given the opportunity to access a large table containing data about twenty-three European states.32 At the same time, William Playfair, the inventor of graphs, starting using new methods to represent and compare the relative fiscal power of European polities. All of these authors vied with each other in their determination to publish accurate and up-to-date information. Like Achenwall in the 1760s, Playfair travelled Europe and relied on patronage and networks in the Republic of Letters to access official documents normally kept secret by government.33 Inevitably, as D. Ciccolella’s article suggest, such contacts allowed exchanges and transfers, making publicity and accountability possible, as well as creating a demand for information and transparency.

• 34  J. Hoppit, 2002.
• 35  D. Dessert, 1984; J. F. Bosher, 1973.

34The road to fiscal transparency in Europe was a long journey because the various polities that made the early modern society were unequally equipped to respond to fiscal crises — that periodically led to questioning of the very fabric of society. Wars, with their impact on the distribution of wealth and the routes they opened for personal enrichment, inevitably led to demands from society on their government. In Britain, such demands were usually met — and defused — by the creation of a Parliamentary Commission entitled to look into Public Accounts.34 In France, up until 1715, monarchs used to set up royal commissions in the form of chambres de justice to investigate the fortune of financiers and issue fines that were never paid.35 Overall, peace was the most efficient tool to balance budgets and avoid popular demands for accountability and punishment. In the context of renewed warfare which raised deep concerns about political stability and financial profit, the traditional elites saw the foundations of their domination challenged by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the constitution of a critical public sphere which did not fit well with traditional channels of communication and legitimation. Powers of second rank were not immune but were partly protected as they were not involved in the American War of Independence which was a major burden on the two main competitors, in particular France, a country which was making quick progress on the road to publicity. The Revolution, however, suddenly opened a new chapter in the history of accountability as it became a principle which had to be implemented in practice. Although the French Revolution’s impact on Europe was arguably considerable, it would take time and more crises before fiscal publicity and political accountability would make their contribution to a faire society.