ABSTRACT
This chapter explores use of FOIA in the United Kingdom, using examples from investigative journalism and social research, including the author’s own research into a failed public service contract. An important focus is the contested character of the boundary between “private” and “public” information. Official accounts can gain credibility through the control of information (the “hierarchy of credibility,” Becker, 1967, p. 241), and new challenges arise in the context of increasing public mistrust of elites. The UK FOIA, which came into effect in 2005, offers a valuable research tool to explore long-standing questions of power, engaging in what Laura Nader described as “studying-up,” to uncover behaviour in “powerful institutions and bureaucratic organisations” (Nader, 1972, p. 292). The author’s case study presents an example of conflicting evidence presented in official accounts of the failed contract and that obtained through FOIA disclosures. This is also used to discuss the performance of “clean-up work” (Vaughan, 1996), as an example of the potential for such research to lift the veil on contemporary mechanisms of power and control.
