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Cite as: Ringel, L (2018). Unpacking the transparency-secrecy nexus. Frontstage and backstage
behavior in a political party. Organization Studies. DOI: 10.1177/0170840618759817
Unpacking the transparency-secrecy nexus:
Frontstage and backstage behavior in a political party
Leopold Ringel
Abstract
While the majority of research promotes the idea of transparency and puts all efforts into refin-
ing existing concepts, critical studies emphasize the performativity of measures to increase vis-
ibility. The article theorizes the nexus of transparency and secrecy by drawing on Erving
Goffman’s frontstage/backstage-theory, according to which actors vie to maintain boundaries
of visibility by alternating these two types of situations. Using this approach, the article inter-
prets the emergence of new forms of secrecy in reaction to transparency measures as efforts to
maintain or create boundaries of visibility between front- and backstage. This perspective is
empirically applied to a study on parliamentarian representatives of the Pirate Party of Ger-
many, a political party that tries to be as transparent as possible and vows to live up to this
ambition when elected. The study demonstrates that an organization which deprives itself of
boundaries of visibility between frontstage and backstage faces obstacles which lead it to even-
tually introduce such boundaries. This study, therefore, offers an in-depth examination of the
limitations of transparency and its unintended consequences.
Keywords: Grounded theory, Interviews, Performativity, Secrecy, Single case study, Transpar-
ency
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Introduction
Transparency has attracted tremendous scholarly interest over the past two decades (Ringel,
2017; Vattimo, 1992). It is commonly understood as an effort to increase the visibility of or-
ganizational activities by eliminating secrecy, with secrecy – especially in public domain –
being widely considered illegitimate and unjustifiable. Transparency is therefore often pro-
moted as a remedy to secrecy, earning itself the status of a "widespread normative doctrine”
(Hood, 2007, p. 193; Brighenti 2007). However, the normative approach to transparency seems
also widely adopted by scholars who (often inadvertently) tend not to question or reflect on the
value we assign to visibility in everyday life, thus promoting transparency as cultural worth to
be universally pursued. Aiming to ‘improve’ organizations, many scientists have joined the
global quest for refining transparency.
The interlinking of scientific and normative agendas, as valid as it might be from a political
point of view, has, however, seriously hampered social scientific theorizing. Therefore, we lack
a deeper understanding of the relationship between transparency and secrecy, as extant research
tends to conceptualize secrecy in purely normative terms, thereby failing to analyze it as a mode
of social action. In contrast, this article offers a non-normative theorization of the relation be-
tween transparency and secrecy. In a nutshell, I argue that the disclosure of information does
not necessarily reduce opacity as such but often triggers the emergence of new forms of secrecy.
Efforts of implementing transparency are fundamentally performative (Loxley 2007): they do
not create neutral knowledge about and observations of organizations, but rearrange them in
unexpected ways.
To this end, the article engages with critical research on transparency (Birchall, 2011; Chris-
tensen, 2002; Christensen & Cheney, 2015; Christensen & Cornelissen, 2015; Fenster, 2006;
Hansen, 2015; Hansen & Flyverbom, 2015; Strathern, 2000; Tsoukas, 1997) and secrecy (Cos-
tas & Grey, 2014, 2016; Parker, 2015; Schoeneborn & Scherer, 2012; Scott, 2013; Stohl &
Stohl, 2011). Conceptually, the article draws on Goffman (1959) to theorize the nexus of trans-
parency and secrecy by applying the concept of front- and backstage. As will be demonstrated,
despite all efforts to increase transparency, organizational front- and backstages, are rearranged
and maintained by the nexus of people, practices, things and relations. Against this backdrop, I
present the findings of an empirical study on the Pirate Party of Germany, a party in favor of
enacting extensive forms of transparency. Its members are deeply committed to authentic self-
disclosure, making it a case that provides rich insights into how an organization with a mem-
bership base of stern transparency believers struggles with the practical implications of their
own ideology.
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The paper proceeds as follows. In the second section, I portray dominant perspectives in trans-
parency research and argue that the nexus of transparency and secrecy has not received suffi-
cient scholarly interest. The third section discusses the contribution of the research on organi-
zational secrecy and develops a Goffmanian reading of the issue that helps to make sense of
organizational responses to demands for transparency. The fourth section introduces the re-
search site and the methods applied. Sections five, six and seven present the findings of a qual-
itative case study on a parliamentary group of the German state North Rhine-Westphalia. Sec-
tion eight closes by discussing implications and suggesting avenues for future studies.
Transparency research
At its core, organizational transparency entails the implementation of formal structures that
ensure the dissemination of hitherto undisclosed – and thus secret – information to external
audiences in oral, written, printed, audio, visual, or digital form. According to the majority of
research, such modes of self-disclosure create neutral observations of organizational activities.
In their extensive literature review, Albu & Flyverbom (2016, p. 14) use the term verifiability
to summarize this point of view: ‘Such conceptualizations start from the premise that by making
more information available we can regulate behavior and improve organizational and societal
affairs through processes of verification’. Scholars who subscribe to this idea often see them-
selves as reformers who offer refined models for practical purposes.
Ever since Austin (1962), scholars across disciplines, organization and management studies
included, have debated the performative dimension of speech, that is, the fact that speech often
interferes in the world it merely seeks to describe thus changing it in unforeseen ways (Gond,
Cabantous, Harding, & Learmonth, 2016). According to Albu & Flyverbom (2016, p. 17), crit-
ical transparency research revolves around the idea of performativity in that it ‘highlights the
generative nature of transparency projects to shape and modify the organizations they seek to
render visible’. In other words, scholars are aware of ‘the complexity of communication and
interpretation processes and focus on the complications and paradoxes generated by transpar-
ency projects’ (Albu & Flyverbom, 2016, p. 14). Disclosure practices thus do not simply convey
information from a sender to a receiver, but they also variously influence subjects, objects,
relations, and situations. Research interested in the performative properties of transparency has
produced rich accounts that differ significantly from the communication model inherent to ver-
ifiability approaches. While the latter argue that information can be packaged by a sender, trans-
ferred, and received by other actors in a neutral manner, the former deviate from this position
in all three dimensions: the production, transformation, and reception of information.
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In terms of the production of information, Christensen (2002, p. 167) argues that self-accounts
are necessarily a social construction, reflecting a particular position within the organization:
‘Transparency, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder’, meaning it is ‘first and foremost a ques-
tion of establishing a consensual system of meaning between different actors’. Representations
of reality are therefore always selective (Strathern, 2000), even in the case of supposedly neutral
and rational numerical operations (Hansen, 2015). Tsoukas (1997) is concerned with the issue
of communicating information to external audiences. He questions the possibility of objective
accounts of reality by emphasizing that the information transmitted is always decontextualized,
suggesting that calls for transparency lead to the diffusion of more decontextualized and medi-
ated public communication. By using terms such as ‘calculative devices’ and ‘mediating de-
vices’, Hansen & Flyverbom (2015) also discuss the complexities of translating ‘local
knowledge and relationships into new contexts and domains’ (Hansen & Flyverbom, 2015, p.
878) and suggest to investigate ‘the complex work of human actors and technologies that goes
into producing that which appears to us as “transparent”’ (Hansen & Flyverbom, 2015 , p.873).
Others, such as Fenster (2006), emphasize that the targeted audiences of transparency are active
interpreters, thereby defying the idea of receivers’ merely ‘unpacking’ the original – ‘true’ –
intention stored in the information. Audiences, in other words, are ‘active, productive, and cre-
ative’ (Christensen & Cheney, 2015, p. 82).
For the purposes of this paper, accounts of how organizations change in unforeseen ways due
to the implementation of transparency measures are particularly illuminating. In their concep-
tual paper, Christensen & Cheney (2015, p. 85) describe to a variety of such performative ef-
fects, which include ‘practices such as selecting, displaying, posing, framing, hiding, and dis-
torting, as well as observing, checking, (self)-controlling and monitoring’. Empirical studies
see to confirm these assumptions. They unveil a variety of unintended consequences such as
overbureaucratization (Anechiarico & Jacobs, 1996), a decrease in efficiency (Bernstein, 2012),
gaming strategies (McGivern & Ferlie, 2007), venue shifting (Van den Brink, Benschop & Jan-
sen, 2010), selective reporting (Neyland, 2007; Levay & Waks, 2009), and decoupling
(Heimstädt, 2017). What these studies have in common is that they register a reluctance to
establish an information stream from the inside out that is in accordance with the institutional-
ized ideal of the ‘transparent organization’. Against the backdrop of these findings, the next
section proposes a theorization of the nexus of transparency and secrecy, which draws attention
to the performativity of information disclosure.
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Frontstage and backstage
The bulk of scholarly work in the verifiability camp assumes a zero-sum relation between trans-
parency and secrecy: The more thorough disclosure practices are implemented, the less secrecy
prevails. If touched upon, secrecy is deemed an evil that needs to be eradicated. Birchall (2011,
p. 12) problematizes this narrow view by stating that a ‘moral discourse that condemns secrecy
and rewards transparency may cause us to overlook the integral, perhaps constitutive, role se-
crecy (in different guises) might play’.
An emergent stream of research on secrecy, a phenomenon still understudied in the social sci-
ences, suggests a non-normative perspective (Costas & Grey, 2014, 2016; Parker, 2015; Schoe-
neborn & Scherer, 2012; Scott, 2013; Stohl & Stohl, 2011). Costas & Grey (2014, 2016) shift
the attention from the content, the informational aspect (‘the secret’), to processes and practices
(‘secrecy’). Accordingly, the question is not what, but how information is hidden within the
organization by one group from another as well as from external audiences. In a nutshell, they
define secrecy as ‘the ongoing formal and informal social processes of intentional concealment
of information from actors by actors in organizations’ (Costas & Grey, 2014, p. 1426). While
formal secrecy pertains to rules officially decided upon and recorded, informal secrecy mani-
fests itself in unwritten rules, conventions, traditions, and shared beliefs. Typically, formal se-
crecy is ensured by the signature of non-disclosure agreements and explicit guidelines to draw
explicit boundaries between in- and out-groups. As a result, organizations possess a powerful
resource to enforce formal secrecy. However, due to its written form it is always in danger of
being leaked, as the famous examples of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning demonstrated.
In contrast, informal secrecy is typically a side-product of organizational membership and
learned via socialization in cliques, departments or working groups. Depending on how tightly
knit such in-groups are, information might permeate relatively easily to outsiders, for instance
in the form of gossip. However, since informal secrecy is usually not documented (and some-
times not even verbalized) it might actually be harder for actors to intentionally share secrets
with outsiders. It is important to note that while both types of secrecy can be distinguished
analytically, they are empirically intertwined and often co-exist in dynamic interplays.
To what end, then, do actors create and apply practices of secrecy? According to Costas & Grey
(2014, 2016), far from only being a strategic that serves the functions of bestowing and exerting
control, secrecy also affirms, assigns, and even creates social identities, making it as much an
issue of meaning and belongingness as of power. Accordingly, it is not always the content of
hidden information that renders a secret (strategically) important, but the act itself can transform
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otherwise trivial knowledge into a good that is precious precisely because others are not privy
to it.
This summary underpins the necessity of engaging with the ‘intertwined relation between se-
crecy and transparency’ (Albu & Flyverbom, 2016, p. 20; Birchall, 2011). In what follows, I
draw on Costas & Grey (2014, 2016) and Goffman (1959) to outline a heuristic conceptualiza-
tion that stresses the performative relation between these two types of social situations.
Goffman is particularly useful to analyze the said relation. His approach (a) allows us to chal-
lenge the assumption that transparency can simply eradicate secrecy, (b) rejects the notion of
secrecy being inherently ‘bad’ and transparency being inherently ‘good’, and (c) sheds new
light on how social situations change in unforeseen ways when actors try to implement trans-
parency.
Goffman (1959) assumes presentations of the self in front of an audience, on the frontstage, to
always have an expressive, self-idealizing dimension. Individuals depend on their ability to
prepare such appearances in private contexts called the backstage. Here they are ‘painstakingly’
(Goffman, 1959, p. 112) engaged in manufacturing and shaping their public presentations. Typ-
ical examples of front- and backstage are bedrooms and living rooms, kitchens and dining
rooms, or the sales floor and the recreation area. Backstage behavior protects three types of
secrets from being exposed: strategic, inside, and dark secrets. While strategic secrets pertain
to practices that need to be hidden in order to achieve certain instrumental goals, inside secrets
grant an individual membership in a certain group. Dark secrets come close to what is of most
interest for the purpose of this paper: They concern practices that are ethically and often legally
problematic, such as corruption or bribery (see the many examples in Costas & Grey, 2016).
However, there are considerably less extreme forms of backstage behavior that also deviate
from institutionalized norms of appropriateness: For instance, a couple that carries out emo-
tional disputes in private while pretending to be in sync at dinner parties obviously tries to give
the appearance of a normal and ‘healthy’ marriage. The couple, albeit constructing a public
self-presentation that is inconsistent with much of their daily behavior, could hardly be de-
scribed as engaging in dark secrecy. I thus suggest to define such instances as secrets of imper-
fection. These are not matters of grave ethical and/or legal misconduct but still indicate incon-
sistency of private actions with publicly endorsed norms of appropriateness. Goffman offers
three assumptions that are crucial for theorizing the relation of transparency and what I call
secrets of imperfection. (1) Individuals try to appear as normal members of society in front of
an audience; (2) this behavior does not come naturally but has to be carefully prepared; (3) the
process of preparation on the backstage often deviates from the ideals displayed in public. As
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a result, individuals are constantly engaged in (re)producing boundaries of visibility between
front- and backstage.
How does this relate to the issue of organizational transparency? Put simply, implementing
measures to increase transparency is supposed to make organizational backstages visible on
their respective frontstage. External audiences (stakeholders, journalists, experts, the general
public etc.) should get ‘the full picture’, which is believed to have a disciplining impact on those
being watched, thereby forcing backstage behavior to be consistent with the norms and ideals
espoused on the frontstage. However, by accepting the assumption that individuals and organ-
izations alike are constantly engaged in separating front- and backstage, we can see an inherent
tension between the promises of transparency and the necessity of a certain amount of secrecy.
It might then be argued that making backstage behavior more transparent is likely to spark
tensions, struggles, negotiations, and, most importantly, efforts to uphold existing or establish
new backstages. To give a poignant empirical example: Roberts (2006), in his study on the
impact of freedom of information laws in Canada, shows that public servants developed an oral
culture in response to the implementation of the law. Minutes and files hitherto containing in-
formation on public organizations’ backstages have thus become accessible at the cost of mov-
ing some portions of backstage behavior to new venues.
Goffman’s theory has important implication for transparency research. First, his processual fo-
cus on micro practices makes him attentive to breaches between frontstage and backstage:
‘There is an abiding sense in which chaos and disorder lurk always at the edges of interactions
and these require work to manage and keep on track’ (Manning, 2008, p. 686). Research on
organizational secrecy subscribes to the same view: ‘however rigidly the barriers are erected
and however rigorously they are policed, they are never fully effective and may be subverted’
(Costas & Grey, 2016, p. 83). Second, frontstage and backstage are separated but also con-
nected, since hiding backstage behavior is foundational for the success of self-presentations on
the frontstage. This claim is also supported by research on organizational secrecy. Third, by
acknowledging that ‘we act better than we know how’ (Goffman, 1959, p. 74), Goffman offers
a nuanced take on actors’ analytical skills and rationality. The division of front- and backstage
rests to some degree on conscious design, but, importantly, also on habitualized practices and
incorporated forms of tacit knowledge. By distinguishing between formal and informal secrecy,
Costas & Grey (2014, 2016) reflect these different modes of social action. In sum, combining
the terminology of Costas & Grey (secrecy as a formal and informal social process that pertains
to both identity and control) and Goffman (frontstage, backstage; strategic, inside, and dark
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secrets, as well as secrets of imperfection) makes it possible to define a specific type of per-
formativity as a topic of research in its own right: the emergence or shifting of organizational
backstages in reaction to the efforts of making boundaries between front- and backstages more
permeable.
Its merits notwithstanding, two issues beg further discussion: the narrow focus on face-to-face
interactions and the spatial dimension. First, Goffman does not theorize the self-presentations
of organizations, but merely explores myriads of interactions unfolding within organizational
frameworks. However, there is a reason to believe that organizations as emergent social phe-
nomena also aim to produce an idealized self-presentation, not least because modern society
treats them as if they are a unitary actor: ‘In the process of becoming social actors, organizations
acquire a kind of soul or persona’ (Drori & Meyer, 2006, p. 38). Granted, when push comes to
shove, individuals act in the true sense of the word. But in the context of organizations (in-
ter)action often represents the organization as a whole and not just the face-to-face interaction
itself. When a shop assistant behaves improperly by using insensitive language, the whole com-
pany’s image can suffer. We might thus scale Goffman’s interaction theory up to the organiza-
tional level by assuming that spatially dispersed people and practices are related, thereby pro-
ducing boundaries of visibility between the organizational front- and backstage.
Second and closely connected to the first point, Goffman anchors front- and backstages in a
specific place where people literally see each other. Meyrowitz (1985) criticizes this narrow
conceptualization and argue that due to technological progress it might be more accurate to
conceptualize social situations as constituted by communication and not by physical co-pres-
ence. Accordingly, two people talking over a phone or chatting online create a social situation.
Internal messaging software, social media services and web conferencing tools, to give just
some examples, thus constitute large communicative networks within an organization and
might sometimes even encompass the entire system. In sum, an array of spatially dispersed
people, practices, things and relations collaboratively manufactures organizational front- and
backstages. As this definition demonstrates, the theoretical lens that I suggest lies not on the
properties of ‘stages’ as such but different modes of their interrelated creation and reproduction.
The section has outlined a heuristic conceptualization of transparency and secrecy by drawing
on research on organizational secrecy and Goffman’s frontstage/backstage theory. The terms
frontstage and backstage connote the intertwinement of these two types of social situations and
the adaption of existing, or creation of new, forms of secrecy in reaction to the implementation
of transparency measures. Costas & Grey’s (2014) theorization of formal and informal secrecy
as social processes offers a rich vocabulary on how to analyze the practices of concealment that
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undergird organizational backstages. From this perspective, secrecy is not necessarily (re)pro-
duced because it is based on morally dubious or even illegal practices (such as corruption).
Rather, organizational behavior often simply fails to conform to cultural conventions, norms,
and ideals. This, of course, does not mean that organizations always successfully maintain a
favorable impression – but they can be expected to try. How specifically people, practices,
things and relations create boundaries of visibility between front- and backstages and if such
efforts are successful remains to be answered in empirical studies.
Research site and methods
Founded in 2006, the Pirate Party of Germany focuses on the issues of transparency and web
policies, especially copyright and public surveillance, combined with a grassroots approach to
political processes, making it a perfect case to study the ramifications of ‘extensive transpar-
ency regimes’ (Albu & Flyverbom, 2016, p. 20). From 2006 until 2009, the party remained
relatively small with only a couple of hundred members. Following the disastrous implementa-
tion of the ‘Zugangserschwerungsgesetz’ in 2009 (a law intending to ban web pages containing
child pornography) the party gained momentum and had an enormous increase in membership
from 800 to more than 11,000 members. Quickly, the Pirates became notorious for their radical
approach to transparency. A comprehensive discourse analysis confirms that transparency is
indeed the most important aspect of their ‘Corporate Identity’ (Hönigsberger & Osterberg,
2012, p. 27), which is represented in many verbal references to this issue but also visually by
placing the topic on political advertisements. The party considers transparency to be a right and
an obligation simultaneously: a right for every member to express their opinions publicly with-
out any restriction and a moral obligation for party officials to document decision-making pro-
cesses as well as all discussions in councils or committees.
The Pirates have a variety of measures at their disposal to ensure a maximum of transparency:
(a) They video stream or audio-tape official meetings and discussions; (b) they make sure that
interactions between the meetings are made public; and (c) each document produced by work-
ing groups or party committees must be published on the various party websites and/or the Wiki
of the party. Furthermore, their mailing lists are open to every citizen and their discussions are
made publicly available via software such as Mumble. Considering the importance of the In-
ternet as a medium, it comes as no surprise that they are excessive users of social media (espe-
cially Twitter).
The party received 8.9% of the votes in the state election in Berlin in September 2011, which
drew much positive media attention and was followed by a rapid surge in public polling and
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exploding membership numbers. Riding on a wave of success between the election in Berlin in
2011 and the summer of 2012, the Pirates gained parliamentary representation in three addi-
tional federal state elections. From July 2012 onwards, journalists increasingly started to focus
on the often messy ways of self-organizing and ubiquitous conflicts carried out in public. As a
result, their polling numbers plummeted and political rivals began to launch verbal attacks. This
brief historical account of the Pirate Party helps to contextualize the case study on the parlia-
mentary group in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The election in North Rhine-
Westphalia (term: 2012-2017) took place in the time of an enormous increase in membership
as well as a peak in public polling at the federal level. Since North Rhine-Westphalia is the
most populated Federal Province in Germany, the parliamentary group with its 20 representa-
tives became the largest of the four parliamentary groups of the Pirate Party. Because of its size
and the fact that it had to be built right in the moment when the media narrative on the Pirate
Party at large began to change and their polling numbers plummeted, this parliamentary group
was chosen as a case to study.
In Germany, parliamentary groups are well organized entities formally independent of the party
they represent, albeit having many informal ties. In the case of the Pirates the party in central
office had almost no professional staff, administrative overhead or financial resources. Accord-
ingly, parliamentary groups were even more autonomous than in the case of established politi-
cal parties. Practically, they can be treated as organizations in their own right that belong to the
same ‘franchise’ (Carty, 2004).
Since studying organizational secrecy is ‘by definition difficult’ (Costas & Grey, 2014, p.
1441), I have chosen a qualitative research design and began with a grounded theory approach
(Glaser & Strauss, 1971). I refrained from predefining the types of data I was going to collect
but decided on these matters in an iterative process by connecting the process of gathering data
and building categories. Finally, the typologies of Goffman and Costas & Grey were used to
organize the findings. In so doing, ‘forcing’ of theory onto the data was prevented. The study
started in January 2013, eight months into the term. From January 2013 until August 2016 I
was able to obtain various types of data. The prime sources are 17 interviews (ranging from 29
to 139 minutes), all of which were recorded and transcribed, and revolve around the time before
the election, the election campaign, and the first months in the parliament. The data corpus was
supplemented by newspaper articles from local as well as national outlets, personal homepages
and/or blogs, Tweets, and discussions on the public mailing list of the parliamentary group.
This heterogeneous pool of data helped to generate different perspectives on the case. The in-
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terviews provided the opportunity to reconstruct actors’ experiences, narratives, and interpre-
tations as well as detailed accounts of backstage behavior. Newspaper articles were used to
investigate how the media portrayed and scandalized the parliamentary group. Personal blogs
informed me on how the representatives present themselves to the public and talk about their
everyday life. The public mailing list of the parliamentary group allowed studying online inter-
actions between the members of the parliamentary group.
To build categories, I started with the interviews and then constantly switched between the
interpretation and collection of different types of data: For instance, after having read articles
about two scandals that happened in the first couple of months into the term, I made them a
subject in the interviews; if someone made a conspicuous statement on his or her blog, I also
brought that up in the interviews and asked them to specify or elaborate. After several rounds
of interpretation, categories changed only gradually and were broadened via selective analyses
of portions of data, whereby theoretical saturation was reached in the final stage of the research
process.
In the following three sections, I discuss the different meanings and mutations of transparency
and secrecy from the time before the election in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2012 onward. The
findings are organized in three phases. Displaying backstage behavior on the frontstage, the
modus operandi in phase one (before the election), was possible due to the symbolic gratifica-
tion of authentic self-disclosure by the mass media. After the election, in phase two, the situa-
tion changed: Authentic self-disclosure became performative in unexpected ways in that it trig-
gered scandalizations by the mass media, exclusion and exploitation by political rivals and al-
ienation from the party base. As a consequence, the members of the parliamentary group intro-
duced boundaries of visibility between the organizational front- and backstage in phase three.
‘Everything has to be transparent’: Defying the separation of front- and
backstage (phase one)
Up until their election in four state parliaments, the Pirate Party seemed to have successfully
rejected the implementation of boundaries of visibility between front- and backstage. My inter-
views with parliamentary representatives of the Pirate Party in North Rhine-Westphalia confirm
this general trend. During the election campaign and consistent with the party’s ideology, they
practiced authentic self-disclosure with no restrictions in online streams, social media, inter-
views, or blog posts. There are internal and external reasons for why the Pirates could abstain
from creating an organizational backstage. At the intraparty level, virtually all Pirates shared a
deep commitment to the core issues of the Pirates, such as transparency, web policies, and grass-
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roots politics, which provided meaning, purpose, and a deep sense of belonging. No matter what
a member of the party stated in public, it was considered legitimate behavior by fellow party
members due to the ideal of voluntary self-disclosure. Rejecting practices of concealment and,
in turn, promoting the notion of ‘everything has to be transparent’ (Interview, A) was clearly a
linchpin of the local Pirate-identity, thus matching the party at large.
External audiences – the mass media and rivaling parties – surprisingly abstained from attack-
ing the Pirates during the election in North Rhine-Westphalia. In fact, after the successful cam-
paign in Berlin the media often ran positive reports on how exciting, interesting, and different
the Pirates are. One of the main reasons for this positive reception was the party’s relative new-
ness, which made it a curious object of investigation for journalists. In retrospect, the informants
seem to be quite aware of their special status: ‘Back then, we had some sort of a sympathy-
bonus, we were perceived as being fresh and new and stuff like that’ (Interview, D). Since the
established political parties also treated them rather nicely, there was no need for the Pirates to
prepare for attacks or to counter allegations. For example, in a newspaper interview the promi-
nent Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel was asked to comment on the Pirate Party. Instead of
criticizing public statements made by members of the Pirate Party (of which there were plenty),
he said the following:
The Pirates have totally different concepts of life than my constituents. You have got to respect that.
And they really have a sense of humor. I saw one of their billboards, depicting a man of my stature, and
written on it: More substance.
1
This is great. I can get along with people who have a sense of humor.
(Dausend & Geis, 2012)
As this example vividly demonstrates, the fact that the Pirates were treated softly by their con-
tenders and received symbolic gratification from the mass media allowed them to reject bound-
aries of visibility and unite around the organizational identity of the party.
This, of course, does not mean that literally everything happening inside the realms of the party
immediately became publicly known. There are indications that even at this stage some actors
applied practices of concealment to vie for intra-organizational control, for instance, by quietly
influencing the process of creating party lists for elections. One informant mentioned the ‘in-
fluence of active members’ (Interview, C), thereby indicating that those who put a lot of energy
and resources in party work developed intraparty networks in order to exert control over party
1
Sigmar Gabriel might be described as slightly overweight.
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decisions. However, these forms of secrecy were neither collectively shared nor aimed at pro-
ducing organizational front- and backstages.
‘How to state parliament’: The perils of transparency (phase two)
The success at the ballot box turned out to be a reality check for the candidates who were de-
termined to implement the party’s vision of all-encompassing transparency in the institutional
core of the political system. The parliamentary group enacted an array of formal disclosure
practices to prevent any limitation of the flow of information: all official meetings – whether
the weekly caucus meetings (in which all of the representatives met in order to prepare and
make decisions regarding their formal structuring and collective actions in the state parliament)
or working groups (in which a smaller number of representatives were responsible for preparing
and developing political positions) – had to be streamed over the internet or at least audio rec-
orded. Discussions outside these meetings were to take place on the public mailing list, the
software Mumble, or on Twitter. Representatives not only had the formal right but also the
moral support of the Party base when it came to freedom of speech, that is, they should be able
to say anything they have on their minds in public (Twitter, Facebook, Blogs or interviews).
Entering the state parliament, the Pirates seemed deeply confused and overwhelmed by their
new work environment. The informants emphasize that they had to ‘jump in at the deep end’
(Interview, M). They realized that a proper parliamentary group needed to be built ‘from
scratch’ (Interview, E; interview, M; interview, I). This willingness to ‘learn the ropes’ is man-
ifest in many statements such as the following:
After the election, we met right here Monday evening at 6pm. At first, we didn’t have any office space,
just one room, and then, well, we had to learn: How to State Parliament.
2
(Interview, A)
The biggest problem for the junior representatives clearly was that they lacked a common iden-
tity providing meaning and purpose in this new situation. Despite having implemented exten-
sive disclosure practices, the informants felt lost and considered the Pirate Party’s frame of
reference regarding transparency and grass-roots politics to be of little use in this new situation.
As a result, there was barely a sense of unity among the newly elected representatives. They
described themselves as ‘20 individuals’ who ‘had to meet every day for a couple of hours in
one room and were suddenly a team’ (Interview, A).
Unsurprisingly, the process of self-organizing was complicated, even more so because it had to
be carried out in a transparent manner. The social relations between the ‘20 individuals’ were
tense and often conflict-laden. A heterogeneous pool of opinions, motives and interests, met by
2
The original German quote is: “How to Landtag“ (“Landtag“ = “state parliament”).
14
largely undefined organizational positions and responsibilities, resulted in often contentious
debates’ (Interview, L) in the web-streamed caucus meetings (initially lasting up to eight hours).
A frequently mentioned example (and thus a symbol for the irrelevance of many of these dis-
cussions) is the ‘legendary fight’ (Interview L) about the acquisition of a coffee machine, with
the main issue being the question as to whether the parliamentary group should buy an expen-
sive machine or a cheap one. The avalanche of information, willingly disclosed by the newly
elected representatives, enabled different styles of consumption by various external audiences,
specifically the mass media, political rivals, and the party base. These styles of consumption
had a variety of unintended side effects. Transparency, in other words, became performative.
The data suggest four such effects.
First, the type of authentic self-disclosure practiced by the Pirates made it easy for the mass
media to create a negative image by exposing dark secrets (Goffman, 1959) and secrets of im-
perfection, which damaged the parliamentary group’s legitimacy and devalued its identity
claims. While the Pirates expected continuing support by the mass media and symbolic gratifi-
cation for their openness and honesty, the extensive transparency regime they had implemented
thus laid the groundwork for an avalanche of negative reports and scandalizations. Clearly, the
honeymoon period between the Pirate Party and the mass media was over, as a quantitative
content analysis of the press coverage confirms (Media Tenor, 2012). This shift was hard to
grasp for the junior representatives: ‘Right now, our way of doing things is seen as a handi-
cap…while, before the election, it was seen as something positive – but nothing really changed’
(Interview, D). The parliamentary group was constantly presented as being ‘at loggerheads’
(Interview, B; interview, L) and immature. The junior representatives had to come to terms with
the fact that ‘of course, the media reports only if someone is dancing on the table naked’ (In-
terview, A).
There is a vivid example of how the media scandalized the parliamentary group by reporting
on publicly available statements of representatives: A couple of months into the term, a female
representative was heavily criticized on the account of a comment she made on Twitter about
an HIV test. The media attached the Tweet to another one in which she complained about the
long hours she had to work and about how boring plenary sessions are. The whole affair had an
enormous impact on her colleagues and made them aware that even past statements can matter
a long time after the fact:
15
I realized that there is no statute of limitation. Because some of the Tweets that the press reported on
date back to March, May. That means they were from the time before Birgit [Rydlewski] was a member
of the State Parliament. (Interview, B)
The second and the third performative property of transparency relate to the political environ-
ment. To understand them it is crucial to recognize the nature of inter-party communication
rules in parliamentarian systems. The Pirates had to come to terms with the fact that parliamen-
tary representatives often act quite differently in front of an audience (for example in plenary
sessions or in newspaper interviews) than they do in private. This is a typical example of what
Costas & Grey (2016, p. 119) call a public secret: Those privy to public secrets usually assume
that others know of their existence; not to be aware of such secrets ‘is not simply to be cut off
from this or that network, but to be estranged from the very foundations of belongingness’. The
following quote demonstrates that this mode of secrecy posed a serious identity problem for the
Pirates as it deviated from the norm of consistency, which is at the core of their transparency
ideal:
This is all…this is all just a big show! Plenary sessions and fighting in front of the press – it is just a big
theatre. And then in the cafeteria people are suddenly very friendly, they say hello, sit with you at the
table…then it is suddenly different. (Interview, A)
The second performative property of transparency is rooted in the distinct type of political pub-
lic communication mentioned in the quote by informant A. Political rivals systematically used
all information to attack the Pirates and exploited the exposure of strategic secrets (Goffman,
1959), which undercut the Pirates’ ability to participate in the state parliament in a meaningful
way. Being as transparent as the Pirates made them highly vulnerable, since they did not have
nearly as much knowledge about their rivals as they possessed about them. For this reason,
engaging with the Pirates publicly, ‘when the camera was on’, was easy game for the other
parties in the state parliament: due to the transparency measures undertaken, there was a rich
variety of material to choose from. In terms of strategy, the Pirates’ rivals were always privy to
plans for upcoming plenary sessions, which had been discussed in detail in the online streamed
caucus meetings.
Third, other politicians felt that the Pirates ignored well-established conventions of secrecy, on
the grounds of which they decide to exclude them from informal backroom negotiations. It is
crucial to recognize that empirically, parliaments are not only formal institutions of public po-
litical deliberation but simultaneously rest on a dense latticework of institutionalized informal
16
encounters that facilitate political decision-making. Since such processes have to remain a se-
cret (because they deviate from the public self-presentation of the political caste), the transpar-
ency imperative promoted by the Pirates caused a serious problem of trust. Their rivals could
not be sure whether such informal encounters were to remain secret, since there was always the
danger of a Pirate to mention them in public. Thus, some of the junior representatives concluded
early on:
They can let us starve to death in here if they want to. That’s why it is so important to motivate them to
work with us. Because if we only act immaturely, they just shut the door in our faces. (Interview, A)
Exclusion is a typical form of sanctioning the breach of public secrets (Costas & Grey, 2016).
According to informant A, in order to be invited to participate in informal backroom meetings,
one has to stop to ‘only act immaturely’ and honor the written and unwritten rules of the state
parliament.
Fourth, authentic self-disclosure failed to connect the parliamentary group with the third envi-
ronment, the party base, and even sparked demands for more intrusive forms of transparency.
Despite having access to an avalanche of information via streamed caucus meetings, Twitter,
mailing lists and personal blogs, the party base felt shut out. The provision of raw information
evidently did not generate trust. Quite the contrary, the modes of self-disclosure practiced by
the newly elected representatives even seemed to have created demands for more transparency.
For instance, three informants mention that some members of the party base called for the in-
stallation of cameras in the representatives’ offices. Such accounts suggest that the party base’s
need for information was not satisfied but actually driven further by transparency measures.
The representatives rejected such demands; some even considered them to be in the spirit of
‘Big Brother’ (Interview, A; interview, C; interview; I; interview K).
The main reason for the increasing distance between the representatives and the party base
seems to have been that they ceased to share a common frame of reference after the election.
While the former felt ‘sucked into’ (Interview, H) their new work environment, in the process
of which they were willing to adapt to the identity of being professional politicians, the latter
insisted on the importance of sticking to the original party values. The findings thus support the
assumption of critical transparency research that information is not a neutral object that con-
nects sender and receiver (Christensen & Cheney, 2015; Fenster, 2006). In the light of these
experiences, the representatives increasingly came to terms with the idea of limiting and organ-
izing transparency: ‘This is the downside of transparency: If you make everything transparent
17
you basically have a huge pile of raw data that needs to be processed’ (Interview I). One in-
formant even told me the following ‘wisdom’ that reflects how the unfiltered disclosure of large
portions of data might sometimes impede rather than enforce transparency (Birchall, 2011;
Christensen & Cornelissen, 2015): ‘If you want to hide information, just put it in the public
wiki [of the Pirate Party, L.R.] where no one can find it’.
Closed sessions, ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’, and private mailing lists: Emer-
gence of an organizational backstage (phase three)
In reaction to the four performative properties of transparency presented in the last section, the
junior representatives, in a piecemeal process, revised the meaning of transparency, engaged in
formal/informal practices of concealment, developed a professional identity, and exerted some
degree of control in the arena of the state parliament by means of strategic secrecy.
Revising the meaning of transparency
In accordance with Werner & Cornelissen (2014), who argue that actors either abandon old
frames of reference or blend them with new ones in uncertain situations, I examined how the
representatives made sense of transparency after being ‘sucked into’ (Interview, H) the state
parliament. The findings suggest that they creatively blended the assumption ‘everything has
to be transparent’ with the standards that they were confronted with. Over the first months in
the state parliament, they collectively created a meaningful distinction between political, stra-
tegic, practical and personal matters. They considered political when it dealt with political
positions. It became strategic when the question was how to achieve those goals. The represent-
atives considered everything a practical matter that had to do with the organization of the daily
life in the state parliament but also the recruitment of new employees. Personal matters con-
cerned the private lives of the representatives and human relations in the parliamentary group.
While the informants agreed that political matters should be transparent, they framed personal
matters as legitimately secret, since the media often exploited such discussions for the purpose
of scandalization:
Take the tabloids for instance: All they care about is the sleazy stuff. They are not interested in political
debates; they want to look under the blanket. That is a violation of privacy rights and has nothing to do
with transparency. (Interview, M)
Practical matters could also be discussed in private. Evidently, the representatives did assume
that they bear any relevance for understanding political decisions. Rather, they were thought of
as a nuisance for the public, a distraction from important issues: ‘Most of these [organizational]
matters have no relevance for the public, which is why we should not bother anybody with these
18
discussions’ (Interview, L). Strategic matters remained an unsettled issue. However, at least
some of them could be kept secret as indicating in the following quote: ‘Sometimes we do
closed parts of the caucus meetings where we not only talk about personal but also strategic
matters’ (Interview, A).
Often it did not seem clear how to attribute a topic, for instance, ‘a political dissent can also be
personal’ (Interview, J). Far from being a problem, this terminological ambiguity actually
granted the representatives a considerable amount of discretion. Now, they could decide if they
were going to interpret an issue as political, strategic, practical or personal. For example, in-
formant C mentions to have mediated a dispute concerning ‘difficulties in a committee’ be-
tween two colleagues. Since those who were privy to the dispute interpreted the issue as a per-
sonal matter, they did not consider it necessary to discuss it in the streamed caucus meeting but
worked things out privately in C’s office. It is fair to assume that C could also have labeled
‘difficulties in a committee’ a political matter. The reinterpretation of what types of information
the representatives had to disclose served as a discursive framework of justification within
which a latticework of formal and informal practices of concealment emerged.
Formal secrecy
The representatives agreed to supplement open sessions of the weekly caucus meetings by
closed parts, during which they turned off the camera to talk about private matters. However,
such situations were not solely used for that purpose. For example, to be able to participate in
the legislative process, informant A considered it important to discuss strategic matters in the
closed part in caucus meetings: ‘Of course, the party base didn’t like it when we did a closed
session in which we discussed not only personal but also strategic matters for our committee
work’. The representatives also started to meet occasionally in undocumented retreats, where
they had a couple of days to discuss pressing personal issues or initiate team-building processes
without having to worry about the reaction of external audiences.
There we could do straight talk, about what is on our mind. For instance: what you did last week in the
plenary session was not right. You can’t do that in passing, and you really can’t do that in front of the
camera. But where else? That’s why these retreats are so important. (Interview, F)
As in the case of closed parts in caucus meetings, representatives did not refrain from discussing
strategic and political matters in retreats. They even admitted to that in public: for instance, a
representative stated in a newspaper interview that the parliamentary group used a retreat to
come up with a position on budgetary policies.
19
The representatives used information and communication technology, originally intended to
improve and increase transparency, to circumvent the visibility of internal processes. For in-
stance, they supplemented the public mailing list by two private mailing lists: One, only acces-
sible for the representatives, and one for all members of the parliamentary group (including the
employees). The official reason for using this device was, again, the discussion of private mat-
ters: ‘We decided to do that because we knew there are private matters that we have to discuss
among ourselves, but not political issues’ (Interview, E). Practically, debates on the private
mailing list concerned a broad range of topics.
Another way of formally ensuring secrecy was a non-disclosure clause – the most basic ‘legal
barrier to disclosure outside of the organizations’ (Costas & Grey, 2016, p. 73) –employees and
interns had to sign. However, there are legal barriers to such formal measures: representatives
cannot be forced to sign a non-disclosure form. As elected officials and members of the state
parliament, they have the guaranteed right to voice their opinion regardless of organization or
party discipline. This right can neither be trumped by formal nor informal organizational rules.
The press office became a particularly important force within the parliamentary group and suc-
ceeded in lobbying for the implementation of rules to minimize the danger of inconsistent pub-
lic messaging. For example, while representatives used to issue press releases for which they
alone were responsible, later on in the term such official statements had to be signed by a min-
imum of three representatives. This reduced the danger of a single representative significantly
‘going rogue’. In general, the press officers relentlessly worked to organize and orchestrate all
public statements of the parliamentary group, especially in terms of their potential scandaliza-
tion by the mass media. In so doing, they related different forms of formal and informal secrecy
to the collective frontstage. Thus, while the representatives developed local and dispersed prac-
tices of secrecy, the press office was concerned with how all public statements together result
in an overall picture.
Informal secrecy
Informal practices of secrecy interacted with and supplemented formal practices. In a manner
of speaking, the backbone of these practices was an increasing awareness among the represent-
atives that public statements can have devastating consequences. As a result, they internalized
the necessity to always be cognizant of what can and cannot be said in public, which is indicated
by the notions of ‘sensitivity’ (Interview, B) or ‘mental self-control’ (Interview, H). Especially
in the case of Twitter, they became more careful: first, because ‘you just can’t discuss complex
issues in 140 characters without creating misunderstandings’ (Interview, F), and second, be-
20
cause conflicts resulting from this characteristic of the medium Twitter are immediately avail-
able for public scrutiny and commentary. The press office was an important factor in this regard
as its members constantly reminded the representatives to reflect on the potential consequences
of statements.
An array of informal practices helped the representatives limit exposure in and navigate through
the weekly-streamed caucus meeting: While these meetings started in an unplanned fashion at
first, it soon became the custom to ritualize the beginning whereby the Pirates created a sym-
bolic boundary between the informal chit-chat before and the official part of the meeting. They
initiated the said ritual by a variation of the question ‘Stream’s on?’, posed by the session mod-
erator to the cameraman; if the answer was positive s/he would say ‘Stream’s on!’, so that
everyone in the room could hear it. Then the session would start. Despite the fact that the meet-
ing was video-taped and streamed on the Internet, the Pirates frequently engaged in hidden
interactions. For example, one informant mentioned kicking under the table the person sitting
next to them because that person exposed sensitive information. Since the table in the confer-
ence room hides the lower torso, viewers could not see what happened down under the tables.
Short off-the-record conversations between representatives, inaudible due to turned-off micro-
phones, are another example. Lastly, actors sometimes camouflaged meaning by applying
‘technical language’ (Interview, C), which was necessary because ‘experience shows that some-
times you have to discuss an issue, but you can’t really bring it up as long as the camera is on’
(Interview, C). Only members of the parliamentary group understood this form of communica-
tion because it rests on tacit knowledge shared by the insiders. External audiences, despite lis-
tening to the conversations and seeing the video stream, did not get the full picture.
A crucial way of practicing informal secrecy outside the caucus meetings was to occasionally
shift strategic deliberations or contentious debates to safe – opaque – venues, such as offices or
the cafeteria. In other words, the representatives learned to make use of the spatial set-up of the
state parliament that allowed them to withdraw from those contexts targeted by transparency
measures. In such situations, some representatives occasionally acted as unofficial arbiters,
thereby playing a crucial role in negotiation processes between rivaling individuals. In conse-
quence, public interactions often tended to be more harmonious than in the beginning of the
terms as conflicts had already been settled.
Identity and control
Developing formal as well as informal practices of concealment was both a resource for identity
building and for strategic moves in the state parliament. It became meaningful in that represent-
21
atives attached such activities to an organizational identity grounded in the ideal of profession-
alism. It became a crucial resource in power plays by bestowing representatives with the ability
of participating in the ‘political game’ that dominates the state parliament.
The emerging identity of the parliamentary group was grounded in the belief that it is necessary
to distinguish between ‘professionals’ (full time politicians) and ‘laymen’ (part time politicians,
or, more generally, the citizenry). As a result, the representatives connected formal and informal
practices of secrecy to a professional ethos (Costas & Grey, 2016, p. 77). While the growing
distance between the parliamentary group and the party base described in the last section made
the representatives feel uneasy at first, they soon embraced it. The following quote demonstrates
vividly their changing attitude towards the party base in the course of the first couple of months
in the state parliament:
We are […] professionals who can dig into an issue fulltime. We are specialized and have additional
resources such as qualified personnel. At the same time, the party base, people who are not in the state
parliament, part-time politicians in a manner of speaking, who deal with issues in their free time only,
well, they also want to participate. (Interview, L)
The representatives considered it their professional prerogative to not only decide what infor-
mation to make transparent but also to filter the input of the party base and transform it so that
it fits the standards of the state parliament. In a sense, this new identity allowed for seeing
themselves as autonomous actors. They increasingly rejected the frame of being ‘megaphones’
for their party base.
As the representatives developed this new identity they became aware of the necessity to limit
the exposure of information their rivals could use for their own strategic advantage. The fol-
lowing example shows how different practices of secrecy were often interrelated in order to
exert control and participate in the ‘political game’ of the state parliament. The Pirates’ most
successful legislative proposal was the so-called ‘bee proposal’ (passed in February 2013 by
the state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia), a term used by several informants. The main
objective of this proposal was to regulate monocultures for the preservation of bees. A parlia-
mentary group of the Pirate Party in another German Federal State passed this legislation and
offered it to the Pirates of North Rhine-Westphalia to use as a template. Some members of the
parliamentary group in North Rhine-Westphalia met in secret to work out a proposal because
they knew their opponents would simply steal it if discussed in public. After they had finished
preparing the proposal, they put it up for debate in the caucus meeting just before proposals had
to be submitted for the upcoming plenary session. Since there was not enough time for the other
parties to steal the proposal, they had to pass it in the plenary session – after all, voting against
22
animal rights is very unpopular. ‘We played chess and checkmated the others because they
simply couldn’t be against it […] the proposal was so well written that the Green Party couldn’t
vote against it’ (Interview, F). However, subsequent informal backroom negotiations with the
Green Party almost failed because a representative of the Pirate Party posted a harsh critique on
the homepage of the parliamentary group, which caused the Greens to threaten to withdraw
their support. The representatives involved in the negotiations persuaded their colleague to take
the statement off the homepage, and, as a result, the negotiations could continue.
The example of the ‘rogue’ representative points to a bigger issue: The separation of front- and
backstage by a nexus of people, practices, things, and relations portrayed in this section was not
stable but fragile. Representatives sometimes decided to reject the ideal of ‘dramaturgical loy-
alty’ (Goffman, 1959, p. 212) by undercutting the idealized self-presentation of the parliamen-
tary group. In other words, they occasionally exhibited only low degrees of ‘dramaturgical dis-
cipline’ (Goffman, 1959, p. 216) due to the symbolic gratification of speaking one’s mind freely
in the Pirate Party. Separating front- and backstage thus became a matter of constant engage-
ment and was always prone to rupture.
Concluding discussion
A growing body of scholarly work examines the performative properties of organizational
transparency, that is, the way in which the disclosure of information changes the objects de-
scribed (Albu & Flyverbom, 2016). This has provided significant insight on meaning making
(Christensen, 2002), the socio-material dimension of creating and translating information (Han-
sen & Flyverbom, 2015), the interpretation of transparent information by audiences (Fenster,
2006), and the mythological quality of transparency in modern society (Christensen & Cornel-
issen, 2015). Generally speaking, the concept of transparency is tightly connected to secrecy.
When discussed, the latter is usually described as harmful and considered to be in need of abol-
ishment with the ‘transparent organization’ as the ultimo ratio. Costas & Grey (2014, 2016)
argue for a non-normative perspective and suggest shifting the attention from the content of
secrecy to the social process of hiding information. They thereby emphasize the practical di-
mension of formally and informally maintaining secrets (Costas & Grey, 2014, 2016).
In this article, I combined both streams of research by drawing on the terms frontstage and
backstage (Goffman, 1959) to emphasize the performative relation of transparency and se-
crecy, specifically, the way in which existing backstages are rearranged or new ones emerge
due to the implementation of transparency measures. I applied this theoretical lens in an empir-
ical study on the Pirate Party of Germany, a political party dedicated to conducting its affairs
as transparently as possible. The case study on the parliamentary group in the federal state North
23
Rhine-Westphalia unveiled how people (elected representatives and their employees), formal
and informal practices of concealment (for instance, the ritualization of the beginning of caucus
meetings, hidden interactions, closed parts of caucus meetings, gatherings in the offices or the
cafeteria, and heightened reflexivity), things (offices, the cafeteria, private mailing lists) and
relations (explicitly reflected by the press office) created boundaries of visibility between the
organizational front- and backstage. The article concludes with a discussion of implications and
potential avenues for future studies.
Critical research on transparency has mainly focused on the social construction of information,
the socio-material implications of transforming information in the process of travelling between
social contexts, and audiences as active interpreters. Meanwhile, the intertwined relation of
transparency and secrecy received only minor attention among researchers interested in the
performative properties of transparency. By implication, the focus suggested in this article is
critical of the popular assumption that secrecy can be outright replaced by transparency. It ar-
gues for non-normative accounts of intra-organizational forms of managing transparency by
preserving and creating new forms of secrecy. It thus highlights that practices of secrecy are
part and parcel of the process of manufacturing an idealized public presentation of the organi-
zation. As a result, the article makes the case for in-depth qualitative and ethnographic research
on organizational responses to the paradoxes and intricacies created by invasive transparency
regimes.
My findings draw further attention to the importance of audience reactions to disclosed infor-
mation: Scandalized by the mass media, exploited and excluded by political rivals, and – all
authentic self-disclosure notwithstanding – criticized by the party base, the parliamentary
group, step by step, introduced boundaries of visibility to filter the information permeating from
the inside to the outside. Furthermore, it is worth noticing that one sub-division specifically –
the press office – was preoccupied with organizing the frontstage of the parliamentary group
by reflecting the perspectives of external audiences, especially the mass media, and relating
different kinds of backstage behavior. This begs the question whether (formal or informal) au-
thorities, whose responsibility it is to orchestrate practices that, in concert, create the frontstage
of an organization, exist in different shapes and forms in other organizational settings.
The article also contributes to research on organizational secrecy. Costas & Grey (2014, 2016)
discuss a variety of reasons for secrecy: Strategy, identity, power struggles, and culture, among
others. By drawing on Goffman I propose to see secrecy as a social process aimed at creating
an organizational frontstage that reflects institutionalized norms of appropriateness. I suggested
to complement the three types of secrets defined by Goffman – strategic, inside, and dark – with
24
a fourth type: secrets of imperfection. While dark secrets pertain to drastic breaches of ethical
and/or legal norms, secrets of imperfection mark lighter deviations from cultural conventions,
rules, norms, and ideals. Most forms of secrecy unveiled in the case study on the Pirate Party
are secrets of imperfections. Typical examples are cases in which the representatives settled
disputes in closed parts of caucus meetings to make the parliamentary group not appear at log-
gerheads in public.
The study shows that information and communication technology is crucial for many types of
secrecy (Hansen, 2015; Hansen & Flyverbom, 2015). For instance, the parliamentary group
supplemented public mailing lists with private mailing lists, which facilitated the emergence of
online front- and backstages. These online practices were then closely entangled with offline
interactions in offices, the cafeteria, the hallway, or retreats. Future studies could benefit from
examining how different kinds of online practices of secrecy create front- and backstages and
relate to, or are even foundational of, their offline counterparts.
Finally, it is paramount for studies on organizational transparency to investigate how actors
attach meaning to secrecy. Costas & Grey (2016) mention several justifications, for example,
the professional ethos of a group, which is clearly reflected in the findings of the study. When
they became professional politicians, the Pirates created distinctions between political, strate-
gic, practical, and personal matters and attached the emergent set of formal/informal practices
of secrecy to this new identity, which, among other things, implied filtering information be-
tween the core of the political system and society. Reconstructing not only different practices
of secrecy but also the meaning(s) attached to it is thus crucial for a deeper understanding of
the nexus of transparency and secrecy.
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