2018/12/22 by Christopher J. Coyne, Nathan P. Goodman, Abigail R. Hall · 1 citation
Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · Engineering · #Ethics in Business and Education #Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems #Corruption and Economic Development #Opportunism #Politics #Principal (computer security) #Democracy #State (computer science) #Political science #Covert #Revelation #Power (physics) #ALARM #Political economy #Law and economics #Computer security #Law #Economics #Computer science #Engineering
paper · doi:10.1515/peps-2018-0024
openalex publication_date 2018/12/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract What role do whistleblowers play in democratic politics? This paper answers this question by analyzing the political economy of whistleblowing within democratic political institutions. Democratic politics is characterized by numerous principal-agent problems creating significant space for opportunism. Whistleblowers help to resolve these principal-agent problems through the revelation of information regarding abuses of power. These revelations can take place internally, by taking advantage of channels to report abuse, or externally, by publicly revealing information. The latter is especially important where internal mechanisms for reporting opportunism are lacking. Whistleblowing in the US national security state is presented to illustrate this logic.