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Fadel Abdulghany
National commissions of inquiry have emerged as essential tools for strengthening democratic governance in countries around the world. They are independent bodies that seek to uncover the truth and investigate human rights violations, institutional corruption, systemic failures, and the inefficiency of security agencies.
The tasks of these commissions are not limited to simply gathering evidence and investigating facts; rather, they embody societies’ aspirations for institutional accountability and uncovering the truth in the public sphere. The reports issued by these commissions, which often result from extensive research, witness testimony, and in-depth expert analysis, represent a meticulous examination of issues that have a profound impact on society. However, the decision to publish these reports in full is not merely a matter of procedural or technical considerations; rather, it is directly connected to the fundamental principles of democratic theory and practice.
The Necessity and Importance of Transparency
Transparency contributes to improving institutional performance by creating an environment that forces all political actors to adhere to rules and procedures, while fully recognizing that their actions are subject to public scrutiny. This clear mechanism serves as a real deterrent to deviations and violations and encourages adherence to human rights standards, which researchers describe as the “self-reinforcing nature of transparent governance systems.”
While transparency provides reliable information about the performance and behavior of institutions, the mere availability of information is not sufficient in itself to achieve accountability. Rather, transparency creates the conditions necessary to enable citizens, the media, civil society organizations, and political opposition parties to exercise scrutiny and accountability, and to demand clarification of institutions’ actions and decisions. This mechanism enhances the legitimacy of institutions by demonstrating that their performance complies with established rules and procedures, which solidifies citizens’ voluntary acceptance of governance and justifies its continued legitimacy.
The theoretical distinction between “soft” and “hard” accountability provides an understanding of the role of transparency in strengthening democracy. Soft accountability refers to the duty of institutions to provide explanations for their actions and answer public questions. It is essentially an ethical and political mechanism based on the power of public dialogue and deliberation to influence institutional behavior. Hard accountability, on the other hand, goes beyond this; it also includes the imposition of sanctions or tangible consequences on institutions in the event of violations or failures. Hence, the publication of commissions of inquiry reports enables both types of accountability. It opens the door to soft accountability by stimulating public debate and media scrutiny, while simultaneously providing the documentary basis for hard accountability through legal proceedings, electoral accountability, or structural reforms. This dual function emphasizes that transparency is not merely a formality for making information available, but rather a complex mechanism for democratic governance at multiple levels.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has emphasized in its analytical frameworks the importance of transparency as a fundamental pillar for achieving institutional effectiveness and consolidating democratic accountability. These frameworks recognize that transparency initiatives must always be accompanied by interactive mechanisms that enable genuine community participation and ensure that institutions respond to citizens’ aspirations. The organization notes that merely disclosing information, without providing clear interaction mechanisms and genuine opportunities for public participation, will not be sufficient to achieve the desired goal of transparency. The approach adopted by the organization distinguishes between formal transparency mechanisms, such as a legal obligation to disclose, and the desired outcomes of transparency itself, namely enabling the public to actively participate in institutional processes. Hence, the importance of the reports of national committees. Official publication alone is not sufficient; it must be reinforced by providing simple and clear content, ensuring its widespread dissemination, and providing opportunities for public interaction and debate.
Learning Mechanisms and Institutional Reform
The published reports of national commissions of inquiry contribute to strengthening institutions’ capacity to develop evidence-based policies by transforming investigation findings into accessible knowledge sources that inform future institutional decision-making processes. The investigations conducted by these commissions represent intensive research and analysis efforts, resulting in a meticulous documentation of institutional errors and failures and their root causes, while also offering insights into possible solutions. Conversely, the publication of these reports ensures that the intended benefits of these analytical efforts are disseminated to the entire public policy community. This creates what are known as “knowledge spillovers,” which strengthen institutional capacity at multiple levels. The evidence and documents contained in these reports provide policymakers with empirically documented analysis of institutional dynamics, enabling them to adopt a more clear and systematic approach to reform, rather than relying on political assumptions or abstract ideological theories.
Published reports serve a preventative function in building institutional memory that goes beyond temporary crisis responses and establishes long-term safeguards to prevent the recurrence of similar failures in the future. Published reports serve as a permanent record that decision-makers, officials, and oversight bodies can draw upon in the future to address similar challenges or assess their institutions’ performance. Creating readily available documentary records establishes clear benchmarks for assessing institutions’ performance over time, allowing for a comparative analysis of their responses to recurring challenges. Without the full publication of these reports, the preventative value of committee work is significantly diminished, as experience has shown that informal knowledge transfer is insufficient to preserve institutional memory across organizational boundaries and long periods of time.
Furthermore, the documentation provided by committee reports provides an opportunity to effect radical institutional reforms by providing a clear evidence base. A thorough analysis of institutional failures, structural weaknesses, and procedural shortcomings allows for a shared understanding of the problems facing institutions, facilitating the coordination of reform efforts. The publication of these reports enables various stakeholders to engage in reform efforts through a common base of facts, reducing the risk that these efforts will be undermined by conflicting narratives or disagreement over the diagnosis of problems. Furthermore, having publicly available reports ensures sustained pressure for reform implementation, as civil society organizations, the media, and the political opposition can rely on the specific findings and recommendations when demanding meaningful institutional changes. This ongoing engagement proves critical to achieving sustainable reforms, especially given that initial political will often weakens without sustained public pressure based on documented information and evidence.
Public Interest and Stakeholder Rights
The theoretical foundations of citizens’ right to access information are based on the principles of popular sovereignty and democratic legitimacy, making transparency a binding necessity, not an option. Democratic theory recognizes that the legitimacy of government is fundamentally based on the consent of the governed, a consent that can only be genuine if it is based on sufficient and reliable information. From this perspective, citizens’ right to access information is not merely a formality; it is a prerequisite for ensuring democratic participation. Commissions of inquiry, typically publicly funded and addressing issues of broad concern, embody this democratic principle in practice. Citizens’ legitimate interest in understanding how institutions function, the reasons for their failures, and the necessary remedial measures constitutes a strong theoretical justification for the obligation of full disclosure of information. This public interest is not mere curiosity; rather, it represents what democratic theorists describe as “democratic competence,” the ability of citizens to make informed decisions about the performance of institutions and the means of holding them politically accountable.
The function of publication, which focuses on victims and those affected by institutional failures, also highlights how transparency plays a practical reparative role in democratic societies. For individuals and groups harmed by institutional violations or failures, published reports provide official recognition of their experiences and constitute official vindication of their grievances. This recognition function operates on several levels: personal, collective, and societal. On the personal level, victims often seek official validation that documents and acknowledges their suffering. On the collective level, publication helps create shared narratives that help affected communities cope with the effects of collective trauma and contribute to promoting reconciliation. On the societal level, published reports provide a reliable historical narrative that prevents denial or falsification of what happened and imposes a clear moral obligation on institutions to take serious steps to address failures. Thus, refraining from publishing these reports not only disrupts the reparative functions of transparency but also perpetuates harm by maintaining official silence regarding documented violations.
Balancing Transparency with Legitimate Constraints
Theoretical frameworks concerned with balancing transparency with the imperatives of maintaining privacy and security recognize that absolute transparency may sometimes conflict with other legal and ethical rights and values. This necessarily requires adopting balanced and principled approaches to managing these conflicts of interest. Conventional legal rules recognize that there are types of information that require special protection, such as sensitive personal information, data related to ongoing security operations, or details that may put individuals at risk, even under highly transparent governance systems. Therefore, the real challenge is not to choose between transparency and confidentiality as two contradictory alternatives, but rather to find procedural frameworks that achieve a balance that promotes comprehensive disclosure while ensuring the protection of legitimate interests in privacy and security. Modern theories focus on procedural solutions that require independent review of non-disclosure decisions, set disclosure deadlines, and provide clear public justifications for non-disclosure. These frameworks are based on the principle of “preference for disclosure” as a general rule, allowing for precise and specific exceptions, rather than granting broad and vague powers to withhold information.
Institutional resistance to publishing reports often reflects concerns about political embarrassment rather than actual security or privacy considerations, revealing the role of transparency in challenging existing balances and power dynamics, even within democratic institutions. This resistance manifests itself in several ways: excessive classification of information, delayed release of reports, publication of incomplete reports that obscure crucial information, or technical and procedural barriers to accessing report content. Theoretical analysis of such resistance reveals that it often stems from what political scientists call “agency problems,” situations in which institutional actors seek to protect their own interests rather than serve the public interest they claim to represent. Democratic norms require subordinating these political concerns to the public interest served by transparency, but achieving this goal in practice requires more than theoretical pronouncements. It requires structural mechanisms that protect publishing decisions from political interference, foster strong institutional and professional incentives for disclosure, and establish clear public expectations that make suppressing or withholding information politically costly.
Conclusion
Published national reports represent historical documents that preserve valuable information about the course of institutional development, the nature of societal challenges, and the response of institutions to various crises. These reports also constitute knowledge sources that enable future generations to review previous experiences, study how government institutions responded to major challenges, and draw lessons learned from past successes or failures. This archival function becomes increasingly important during transitional periods, when institutional memory is vulnerable to disintegration due to political changes or organizational transformations. Therefore, creating documentary records that are clearly accessible to all ensures that societies can learn from their past, better understand their stages of institutional development, and build on what has been achieved instead of re-discovering the same problems over and over again.
