Kristin M. Lord's book title sums up her provocative and thought-provoking main arguments. The conventional wisdom is that transparency usually reduces unwarranted fears and worst-case assumptions, and reduces corruption in government and business. Transparency can thereby calm arms races, prevent wars, and promote understanding, democracy, wealth generation, and justice. Lord's clearly written book is the single most pointed attack on these widely held views. This is its major contribution, and it builds on her work with Bernard I. Finel with whom she coedited Power and Conflict in the Age of Transparency (2002). (See also James Marquardt, “Why Transparency in International Relations is not What it Appears to Be,” Ph.D. diss.,University of Chicago, 1998.)

Lord begins by defining transparency which, “in sum, describes the relative availability of information, without respect to content” (p. 5). This is an expansive and somewhat problematic definition. I shall return to this issue later. She then identifies five factors that have led to our new age of global transparency. First, democracies now constitute two-thirds of all governments, and democracies generate much more information about themselves than other forms of government. Second, the spread of the global media means that there is now a much greater number of 24/7 news outlets with bureaus around the world. Third, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have spread in “number and power” (p. 7) are often able to monitor and provide information on their issue areas. Fourth, international organizations (IOs) also monitor and provide information, but beyond that they are often able to require members to disclose information. Finally, information technology has greatly lowered the costs of sharing information.

Moving on to the meat of the book, Lord discusses the positive and negative influences of transparency and information more generally on various issue areas such as causes of conflict, on causes of intergroup hostility and prejudice, on the motivation and willingness of states and IOs to intervene to resolve conflicts, and finally on trends toward and away from democratization. For example, sometimes transparency can enhance deterrence if a potential revisionist finds out that it is not strong enough to have a good chance at defeating its target in war. But what happens when new information shows that the balance is in its favor? Sometimes transparency may humanize an out-group and reduce hostility. However, familiarity may also breed contempt. Some NGOs use transparency and information technologies to shame governments and businesses into better behavior. But Lord then points out that terrorists are also a form of NGO, and that they use these same technologies to remain in contact and to plan attacks.

Lord uses the case of the Rwandan genocide to argue that “freer flows of information sometimes can … facilitate violence.” In this case, the Hutus hijacked the media and civil society organizations to differentiate themselves from the Tutsi, to dehumanize the Tutsi, and then to spur and coordinate the actual killing of the Tutsi. It was a lethal “distorted marketplace of ideas” (pp. 64–65).

Even though Lord is clearly out to refute the conventional wisdom by presenting the downsides of transparency, she very fairly presents the positive sides. The lingering question is when and under what conditions transparency does or does not cause conflict or help democratization. In the end, though, she concludes that a commitment to transparency is a moral and practical value and that governments should commit to transparency, even as they prepare to deal with the downsides of the age of information.

Aside from its attack on the conventional and optimistic view of transparency, this book makes at least two other contributions. First, it highlights the distributional consequences of information. Information's effects are not necessarily equal, and new information can affect relative power. The rationalists have looked at this issue for some time, and Lord helps bring these consequences into wider view. Second, she emphasizes the degree to which humans, in their cultural and political contexts, interpret the information they receive. Even with the same common information, different people may have different interpretations, and it may be difficult for transparency to prevent conflict if these people have conflicting interests. For those who think miscalculation and misperception are major causes of war, transparency may appear to be an elixir of peace. If Lord is correct, however, that miscalculation and misperception are part of the human condition, then the potential of transparency may be limited. Indeed, transparency as most people define it may be hard to come by at all.

The major problem with the book lies in its definition of transparency, which for Lord is simply a measure of the quantity of information. The accuracy of information is left aside. She is explicit in her definition, and so one can view the book and her arguments on her terms. I nonetheless think that the definition raises several issues. First, it does not comport with the usual usage of the term, which stresses accuracy of information (though in practice she often uses it this way). Just think of all the activities designed to increase transparency: arms control verification, peacekeeping, freedom of information laws, financial disclosure, and so forth. All these are designed to increase the amount and accuracy of information, and they are diagnosed as failing when they do not. Second, this definition causes analytical problems when Lord ascribes a pernicious effect of transparency to something that is really due to misinformation. For example, for Lord, the false Newsweek story about a Koran being flushed down the toilet at Guantanamo Bay (pp. 1–2) is an example of transparency in action. To most people, a false story represents rumor, myth, misinformation, opacity, or propaganda—not transparency. Likewise, is the story in Rwanda about transparency? Or about the use of information mechanisms for hatemongering? Third, the expansive definition makes it hard to distinguish in Lord's narrative between opacity and transparency, accurate versus false information. This leaves it up to the reader to do so, and makes it harder to address the question of whether we are moving toward a world with more or less transparency. Do CNN and Al Jazeera complement each other, or is the world heading toward more balkanized information spaces?

There is a very easy and substantial response to these critiques. If one recasts the book as not just about transparency but more broadly as a thought piece on the positive and negative impacts of the global information and communications revolution, then The Perils of Global Transparency is a pioneering, important, and timely book indeed.