Introduction: Transparency in Public Policy

This book is a collection of discussions about public policies that are of interest to most citizens: health care, education, gun control, the environment, and the mechanisms by which public money is budgeted. In various ways, the chapters address the question of policy transparency. We use transparency to describe those policies that are easily understood, where information about the policy is available, where accountability is clear, and where citizens know what role they play in the implementation of the policy. The book seeks to describe and analyze aspects of transparency using a comparative approach: each author discusses his or her policy field by contrasting policy structures between Great Britain and the United States.