Unveiling the concept of transparency: its limits, varieties and the creation of a typology

Abstract This article aims to unveil the concept of transparency considering its limits, varieties and forms of identification. The premise is that secrecy is vital in the execution of some public policies, which brings different parameters to the analysis of transparency in these contexts if compared with policies that do not need secrecy. The purpose of this article is to fill a gap in the national and international literature, which disregards the different levels of access to information of public organizations citizens can have. Therefore, through the application of Goertz (2006a) model of concept formation on Michener and Bersch’s (2013) concept of transparency, and also considering the transparency varieties and directions mentioned by Hood and Heald (2006), the study proposes a typology with four non-mutually exclusive subtypes of transparency in organizations: the fuller transparency, the nominal transparency, the conditional transparency and the transparency in the allocation and management of sensitive information. The typology reveals a myriad of different layers of access to information and analysis that enable more precise transparency evaluations of public institutions. Finally, the definitions and the analytical possibilities of each of the subtypes are discussed.