Abstract
In this book we argue that whistleblowing is crucial for democracy because it contributes to institutional transparency and is a safeguard against the potential abuse of government and corporate power. Its motivating idea is that whistleblowing is a form of civil dissent, that is a conscientious act against the corporate and public powers when they endanger the public interest of democratic communities.
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Notes
- 1.
Whether a normative theory of justice should be ideal or instead account for the non-ideal circumstances of its implementation is an issue many authors have discussed in recent years. On one account, theories of justice should have an aspirational aim, for their conceptual function is not to recommend how people and institutions should behave, but to define the standards through which people and institutions can be judged, and possibly improved (see Estlund 2014) . On a different account, the aim of ideal theories is not aspirational, let alone ‘realistic,’ but conceptual: to establish principles of justice independently from their practical goals, where principles do not depend on facts of the matter concerning human behavior (see Cohen 2003). When the problem concerns the concept of democracy , it seems difficult to imagine a purely conceptual model of democracy that does not have any practical goal. In this book, we will leave aside the debate on ideal and non-ideal theory to focus instead on standards of judgment for actual governmental practices.
- 2.
See for instance Christiano (2008) who defends an interpretation along these lines.
References
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Christiano, Thomas. 2008. The Constitution of Equality. Democratic Authority and Its Limits. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, Gerald A. 2003. Facts and Principles. Philosophy and Public Affairs 31 (3): 211–245.
Estlund, David. 2014. Utopopobia. Philosophy and Public Affairs 42 (2): 113–134.
Raz, Joseph. 1979. The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Santoro, D., Kumar, M. (2018). Introduction. In: Speaking Truth to Power - A Theory of Whistleblowing. Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90723-9_1
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