ABSTRACT
The chapter traces the close link between theorisations of the public sphere and transparency on the one hand and the struggle of social movements for more political representation and greater social equality on the other and contrasts the development of the idea of transparency and the public sphere with the practice of social movements from the early modern period to the present. The authors demonstrate that transparency has been a consistent demand of social movements in their desire to extend the public sphere, as such an extension was understood as the precondition for realising a wide range of objectives. In this way, demands for transparency were closely bound up with strivings for power, the construction of ideologies and with attempts to provide a basis for rational criticism and more reasonable forms of governance. Thus, the chapter concludes that social movements had a major part in developing notions of the public sphere, not the least because those notions could be used as a weapon in specific struggles. This normative function of the public sphere is an important one to consider when talking about the role of demands for greater transparency.
