Democracy in Darkness Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions [Audiobook]

In a context where gaining public trust seemed to demand transparency, was secrecy ever legitimate? Whether in Philadelphia or Paris, establishing popular sovereignty required navigating between an ideological imperative to eradicate secrets from the state and a practical need to limit transparency in government. The fight over this-dividing revolutionaries and vexing founders-would determine the nature of the world's first representative democracies. Unveiling modern democracy's surprisingly shadowy origins, Carter reshapes our understanding of how government by and for the people emerged during the Age of Revolutions.