Speaking Truth to Power - A Theory of Whistleblowing

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Daniele Santoro, Manohar Kumar

   Pages 1-7

3. What Is Whistleblowing?

   • Daniele Santoro, Manohar Kumar

   Pages 9-53

4. Public Interest and the Threat of Corruption: A Case for Civic Whistleblowing

   • Daniele Santoro, Manohar Kumar

   Pages 55-81

5. The Threat of Secrecy

   • Daniele Santoro, Manohar Kumar

   Pages 83-121

6. A Justification of Political Whistleblowing

   • Daniele Santoro, Manohar Kumar

   Pages 123-149

7. Charting Dissent: Whistleblowing, Civil Disobedience, and Conscientious Objection

   • Daniele Santoro, Manohar Kumar

   Pages 151-172

8. Conclusion

   • Daniele Santoro, Manohar Kumar

   Pages 173-179

9. Back Matter

   Pages 181-190

   PDF

Whistleblowing is the public disclosure of information with the purpose of revealing wrongdoings and abuses of power that harm the public interest. This book presents a comprehensive theory of whistleblowing: it defines the concept, reconstructs its origins, discusses it within the current ethical debate, and elaborates a justification of unauthorized disclosures. Its normative proposal is based on three criteria of permissibility: the communicative constraints, the intent, and the public interest conditions. The book distinguishes between two forms of whistleblowing, civic and political, showing how they apply in the contexts of corruption and government secrecy.

The book articulates a conception of public interest as a claim concerning the presumptive interest of the public. It argues that public interest is defined in opposition to corporate powers and its core content identified by the rights that are all-purposive for the distribution of social benefits.  

A crucial part of the proposal is dedicated to the impact of security policies and government secrecy on civil liberties. It argues that unrestrained secrecy limits the epistemic entitlement of citizens to know under which conditions their rights are limited by security policies and corporate interests. When citizens are denied the right to assess when these policies are prejudicial to their freedoms, whistleblowing represents a legitimate form of political agency that safeguards the fundamental rights of citizens against the threat of unrestrained secrecy by government power.

Finally, the book contributes to shifting the attention of democratic theory from the procedures of consent formation to the mechanisms that guarantee the expression of dissent. It argues that whistleblowing is a distinctive form of civil dissent that contributes to the demands of institutional transparency in constitutional democracies and explores the idea that the way institutions are responsiveto dissent determines the robustness of democracy, and ultimately, its legitimacy. What place dissenters have within a society, whether they enjoy personal safety, legal protection, and safe channels for their disclosure, are hallmarks of a good democracy, and of its sense of justice.    

• Civil Disobedience and Constitutional Liberties
• Comprehensive theory of whistleblowing
• Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers
• Democratic Function of Dissent
• Dissent and Democracy
• Edward Snowden
• Freedom of Speech
• Government accountability
• Justification of Whistleblowing
• Legitimate and deviant forms of dissent
• NSA surveillance program
• Political whistleblowing
• Threat of Secrecy
• Wikileaks and Edward Snowden

“Speaking Truth to Power is organized like an essay collection. Each chapter has its own abstract, keywords and reference list. … The book, nevertheless, represents the most important contribution on the theme, pregnant with important consequences concerning non-ideal democratic theory and the criteria of public interest.” (Rúben Batista, Ethical Perspectives, Vol. 27 (1), 2020)

• Centre for Ethics, Politics, and Society, ILCH, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

  Daniele Santoro

• Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, New Delhi, India

  Manohar Kumar

Daniele Santoro is Researcher at the Center for Ethics, Politics, and Society (CEPS) of the University of Minho - Portugal. His interests lie in the ethics of dissent, secrecy, constitutional rights, the epistemic aspects of rights and justice, and the pragmatic analysis of legal concepts. His works on these and related subjects have appeared, among others, for Social Epistemology, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Philosophical Topics, Philosophia and in edited volumes for Routledge and Continuum.

He holds a PhD in Philosophy of Law from the University of Padua. In recent year he held research fellowships at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IRPPS), the Luiss University of Rome (where he taught for several years), the Institute for Advanced Studies of Aix-Marseille, and the Hoover Chair at UC Louvain.

Manohar Kumar is Assistant Professor of IT and Society at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi. Hiscurrent research interests are around questions of civil disobedience, democratic secrecy, digital dissent, and epistemic injustice. His works have appeared in Philosophy and Social Criticism, and in edited volumes of Routledge. He holds a PhD in Political Theory from LUISS University, Rome and has held post-doctoral positions at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, and at Aix Marseille School of Economics, Aix Marseille University, where this book was completed.

Policies and ethics