Who guards the guardians?

Democratic and republican political theory presume that the abuse of executive power can be combated with the use of oversight. However, they also accept that the successful exercise of executive power can legitimately require state secrecy. So how can oversight function in the presence of secrecy? Democratic theorists respond by promoting the norm of transparency. However, since the calculation of harm likely to be caused by transparency cannot be undertaken in public, only the executive can decide when transparency is permissible--a regulatory setting that does not inspire confidence. Republican theorists promote oversight by vesting it in the care of the legislature and judiciary. However, this arrangement arguably renews rather than resolves the fear of abuse as it cannot prevent overseers from abusing secrecy for their own partisan ends. The foregoing inadequacies motivate an examination of two alternative modes of oversight: the retrospective enforcement of accountability and circumvention (or 'leaks' to the news media). While circumvention promotes retrospection, its compatibility with democratic and republican theory depends on the willingness of circumventors to act publicly, i.e. at significant personal risk. Hence, the dissertation concludes, if these theories are to resolve the conflict between secrecy and oversight, they need to move beyond studying public norms and institutions to account for the role of private virtue and private institutions in combating the abuse of discretionary executive power in general and state secrecy in particular.