Hiding the State: Outsourcing Security to Avoid Transparency and Accountability
FALL 2019 RESEARCH INCUBATION AWARDEES
PI: Kaija Schilde, Assistant Professor of International Relations, CAS
Track: HIC
Researchers, journalists, and citizens have used the Freedom of Information (FOIA) Requests since 1965 as a proxy for transparency and democratic oversight. The researcher hypothesized that increases in transparency requests in a given area will produce increased government outsourcing in that area to shield themselves from democratic accountability. This project will help the society to understand these processes and could lead to pressures to better measure, report and regulate the processes of government outsourcing and contractor accountability.