Date of Award
1-5-2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Public Administration, MPA
First Advisor
Catherine Reese
Committee Members
David Harding; William Mclean
Call Number
LD 251 .A566t 2014 S53
Abstract
As of policy choices, the two presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush took different approaches towards transparency and secrecy. They diverged in their policies of managing federal information and their administrations records. Accordingly, the Bush administration and Obama administration had both implied the concept of transparency a new avenue for the public's participation and communication. Despite the rhetoric and wordy promise of transparency, Presidents Bush and Obama painted their administrations with secrecy and covert operations. They tightened up the cap on their administrations by changing the purpose and text of the Freedom of Information Act. However, there were variations and different trends in each president's policy choices regarding transparency and secrecy. The purpose of this study is to identify the variations and factors about the Bush and Obama administrations' approaches regarding transparency and secrecy. The thesis examines the legal, theoretical, and public policy arguments used by the Obama administration and Bush administration when they both employed secrecy and transparency in decision making. It explores most scholarship about transparency and secrecy and delves into the literature written for Presidents Bush and Obama. The research conducts a case study approach and analyzes a court case to highlight the issue of transparency and secrecy in the public administration literature.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Soujaa, Ismail, "Managing Classified Information: Transparency and Government Surveillance Progam A Comparison Between the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration" (2015). Student Theses and Dissertations. 753.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/753
