Well, if things could talk then I’m sure you’d hear A lot of things to make you cry, my dear. Ain’t you glad, Oh, ain’t you glad, Ain’t you glad, Glad that things don’t talk?

Most democracies are representative. Elected by the people, representatives constitute a legislature and create laws. This is typically done through voting. This raises an interesting question of institutional design: should our representatives vote transparently or by secret ballot? No contemporary philosopher, to my knowledge, has addressed this question. In this chapter I argue that if we take seriously the value of political equality—a normative ideal that nearly all democratic theorists embrace—then voting among representatives in a legislature ought to occur by secret ballot. Representatives should vote just as citizens do in elections. Democratic equality, I argue, thrives in darkness.

This introductory chapter offers an overview of Secret Government: The Pathologies of Publicity. The book is split into two separate and autonomous parts, roughly tracking what I take to be two distinct traditions in political philosophy. Part I is focused on transparency as it relates to questions of institutional design. Part II focuses on publicity as it relates to the political philosophy of John Rawls and the liberal tradition he inspired. In conjunction, parts I and II jointly offer something like a comprehensive philosophical analysis of transparency in government.

This chapter documents how the Roman elite attempted to speak to ‘popular’ concerns: Will there be enough to eat? Can we keep the favor of the gods? How will our rights to land and our own bodies be protected? What can preserve the anonymity of our votes? It starts with coins celebrating concord in the aftermath of the Catilinarian conspiracy.It then looks at the representation of religious festivals and the city's grain supply on the coinage.The next section examines numismatic evidence related to Roman agrarian policies and colonization, with particular attention to Paestum.The last section considers how the coinage reflects constitutional issues, especially the secret ballot and political rhetoric in reaction to the Sullan Constitution.