Openness is essential for democratic leadership, representing a moral commitment and an instrument to increase trust and legitimacy. However, secrecy can still aid a leader, providing a means of protecting power, guarding substantive policies or preserving reputation. This paper examines how Theresa May used secrecy around the UK-EU Brexit negotiations to protect her power, policy and reputation. While this appeared initially successful, over time the counter-pressure of openness have reversed any benefits. By the beginning of 2019 it was clear that May's secrecy had limited her power, undermined her policy and ultimately damaged her reputation. The analysis ends by comparing drawing comparisons with Donald Trump, who has similarly sought to hide his actions, with counter-productive results.The case study illustrates how secrecy can create political space and bolster reputations in the short term. However, in increasingly transparent governance systems such as the US and UK, secrets are much harder to keep long-term. Secret-keeping encourages leaking and greater scrutiny, exposes policies and damages reputations. Context is key, and secrecy is more difficult for high profile controversial issues, such as Brexit, and particularly damaging if exposed when it is tied to the reputation of the leader themselves, as it was with May.
Tracing progress in implementing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is at the core of pushing and accounting for change. However, monitoring SDGs is challenged by a lack of purpose-fit and high-quality indicators based on data that are collected through a sound methodology, generated regularly, comparable over time, and publicly accessible. Assessing and improving the quality of existing data is essential for helping countries to generate an evidence base for action. General criteria for evaluating data quality are already available at the national and international level but their practical operationalization for the assessment of specific SDGs indicators is still underdeveloped. Taking target 16.5 as a case study, this paper evaluates the quality of existing corruption surveys and their relevance for SDGs. Results show that the main challenges concern data validity (they measure only one aspect of corruption), comparability (they use culturally biased definitions), periodicity (they are not regularly developed), and raw-data accessibility. This paper develops an original framework for benchmarking the overall methodological quality of existing corruption metrics. This framework can be used beyond the immediate context of corruption measurement and SDGs assessment. The same logic and methodology can, indeed, be employed to evaluate the quality of other metrics and support national governments and practitioners in identifying the informational and methodological gaps to be addressed in order to improve and make the best use of available statistical information.
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