THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT: FROM PRESSURE TO POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

This dissertation traces the argument over official information policy from 1948 to 1981. During that period, Congress forced the Executive to change from an assumption of official secrecy to a qualified principle of open government, largely through the enactment and strengthening of the Freedom of Information Act.; Congressional oversight in this instance has been vastly more successful in forcing implementation than one could expect from political science literature. That congressional attention has spanned a quarter century, and has been encouraged by the press but without any pork barrel incentives. This suggests that scholars have viewed oversight wrongly, by not including the investigative hearings which precede new legislation, and by not examining the policy impact in its fullest sense. A commitment to the policy concept and favorable press attention are sufficient to ensure congressional interest.; The entire federal bureaucracy opposed Freedom of Information yet even the law enforcement agencies have released a substantial quantity of material. Congress investigated all the techniques by which officials were able to avoid implementing the 1966 FOIA, and amended the Act in 1974. Officials found the balance of nuisance had tilted against withholding information.; Judges have generally tried to prevent an overload of administrative problems from spilling over to their own branch. They have consequently encouraged some valuable administrative innovations, and their net effect has probably been to encourage open government except at the intelligence and foreign policy agencies. They tend to favor business firms more than other requesters because of the cost of legal counsel, but the public interest groups have used a few lawyers themselves to obtain a remarkable amount of official documents.; The FOIA has not benefitted most the people who lobbied for it. The press who initiated pressure for the law and campaigned for it across the country, have received documents but their requests have been outnumbered by those from business; perhaps half of requests have come from companies. Some of those requests are for trade secrets and some have tied down small regulatory agencies engaged in litigation with companies. Neither of these effects was anticipated by the FOIA's sponsors.