Democratic Backsliding: Constitutions and the Secret State Artwork

Efficient Secrets

Constitutions provide the basic laws and principles of government for modern states. They determine the powers and duties of those who govern, and guarantee rights and freedoms to those who are governed. Yet few countries politics can be understood through these documents alone. Constitutions have, in Walter Bagehot’s famous formulation, “secrets” which don’t always align to “the traditional theory, as it exists in all the books”. This podcast looks at the different efficient secrets of democratic constitutions, as well as the challenges to them, to gain deeper insights into the unstable and fractious politics of the twenty first century – a time when democratic politics finds itself under increasing attack. The podcast is part of a broader project, the Oxford Constitutional Studies Forum, which brings together scholars of law and politics to understand the challenges faced by liberal democracies across the world today.

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Efficient Secrets

Democratic Backsliding: Constitutions and the Secret State

March 31, 2022 • Oxford Constitutional Studies Forum • Season 1 • Episode 8

In this, the last episode of our first season, we’ll look at one final issue which bears on the question of backsliding – how democratic constitutions deal with the secret state. Even in democratic states some aspects of state activity are difficult or impossible to make fully transparent and accountable to the public.

This is because some actions must necessarily be covert in order to be effective – from the operation of intelligence services to military operations and sensitive weapons systems . Governments may need to be able to protect certain information about this from public release, temporarily or - even more problematically - indefinitely.

Can such restrictions ever be justified from the perspective of democratic states, and if so, where does necessary information security cross the line into secret states which exist beyond democracy?

Guest: Prof. Harold Hongju Koh