Democracy in Darkness

How debates over secrecy and transparency in politics during the eighteenth century shaped modern democracy

Does democracy die in darkness, as the saying suggests? Democracy in Darkness, set in the Age of Revolutions, reveals that modern democracy was born in secrecy—despite the widespread conviction that transparency was key to self-government.

Using extensive archival research in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, Katlyn Marie Carter shows how state secrecy became associated with despotism in the lead-up to the American and French revolutions. But as revolutionaries sought to fashion representative government, they faced a dilemma: Where did secrecy fit in a context where gaining public trust seemed to demand transparency? Whether in Philadelphia or Paris, establishing popular sovereignty required navigating between an ideological imperative to eradicate secrets from the state and a practical need to limit transparency in government. The prolonged fight over this contradiction determined the character and durability of the first representative democracies.

Unveiling modern democracy’s surprisingly shadowy origins, Carter reshapes our understanding of how government by and for the people emerged during the Age of Revolutions.