In Democracy Declassified: The Secrecy Dilemma in National Security, Michael Colaresi attempts to address the question of how democracies balance the need for both foreign policy and national secrets while maintaining public accountability. Many other theories on the topic address how democracies use secrecy to their benefit. Reiter and Stam (2002), for instance, believe that democracies use covert actions to keep foreign policy decision and actions from becoming public. Additionally, John Ikenberry (2001) contends that because democratic governments are to some extent transparent, they can generate greater cooperation from other governments. However, Colaresi believes that other theorists fail to mention one critical aspect, the secrecy dilemma.
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208). He says that with low levels of oversight, spending on the military is at a low point, as the public does not trust the government, and therefore will not allow any spending. At medium levels of oversight, spending is maximized as the public trusts the government, but oversight is not so high that the executive cannot include extra spending in their bills. At high levels of oversight, spending dips down from where it was at medium levels of oversight, but it still higher than at low levels due to the public trusting the government, allowing the bills to be passed, but the oversight is high enough where no extra spending is added to the bill. Although his data generally supports this theory, it does not fully fit his prediction of what would occur at low levels of oversight. From the figures, one can see that at low levels of oversight, there is initially higher spending than Colaresi thought, but then as oversight increases a little, spending goes down. However, as oversight continues to increase, the pattern of spending follows Colaresi’s hypothesis. This initial bump makes sense, with very low levels of oversight, a government can spend however much it desires with the only possible repercussion occurring in the ballot box. Yet, even this repercussion is unlikely to occur, as without oversight institutions, the public is unlikely to know of executive abuses. However, as oversight increases, military spending decreases as now there are risks due to oversight institutions and a lack of public
208). He says that with low levels of oversight, spending on the military is at a low point, as the public does not trust the government, and therefore will not allow any spending. At medium levels of oversight, spending is maximized as the public trusts the government, but oversight is not so high that the executive cannot include extra spending in their bills. At high levels of oversight, spending dips down from where it was at medium levels of oversight, but it still higher than at low levels due to the public trusting the government, allowing the bills to be passed, but the oversight is high enough where no extra spending is added to the bill. Although his data generally supports this theory, it does not fully fit his prediction of what would occur at low levels of oversight. From the figures, one can see that at low levels of oversight, there is initially higher spending than Colaresi thought, but then as oversight increases a little, spending goes down. However, as oversight continues to increase, the pattern of spending follows Colaresi’s hypothesis. This initial bump makes sense, with very low levels of oversight, a government can spend however much it desires with the only possible repercussion occurring in the ballot box. Yet, even this repercussion is unlikely to occur, as without oversight institutions, the public is unlikely to know of executive abuses. However, as oversight increases, military spending decreases as now there are risks due to oversight institutions and a lack of public