Establishing transparency agencies

Providing an overview of government intervention

Context

One way to promote public understanding of the public interest is to set up a "transparency" agency whose function is to provide an overview of government intervention. It acts to assist both government and the public see sectoral proposals in an economy-wide framework. With sufficient independence and investigative powers a transparency agency can influence other branches of the bureaucracy.

Counter-claim

In a number of countries, tariff commissions are intended to carry out this role, but the results have been mixed. Such commissions have often spent much of their time working on highly technical questions as to whether an industry has suffered damage or injury, whether this can be attributed to imports, and whether these imports are unfair in some sense. In addition governments are always under pressure to mute their role by diluting their terms of reference.