Paper short abstract:

My paper explores Whitehall civil servants’ uses of deliberate concealment and deferral of negotiations into the future, as two strategies that make their diplomacy effective in avoiding displays of perilous and divisive knowledge in the context of official policy negotiation meetings.

Paper long abstract:

How is a participatory policy on transparency negotiated, when public display of knowledge is deemed dangerous precisely because it can make transparent informal alliances and potentially divisive interests?

The question arises in the context of negotiations between Whitehall civil servants and their "stakeholders" about the design and implementation of the UK Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The Initiative is a fiscal transparency policy for extractive industries, implemented collaboratively by "the Government", "the Industry" and "the Civil Society" — the three "constituencies" whose representatives deliberate by consensus in official meetings.

My ethnographic paper will examine the social effects which civil servants ascribe to the public display of knowledge about conflict and disagreement in the context of UK EITI negotiations. I suggest that in so far as official policy meetings are meant to perform certain social forms (namely, the wholes of the three "constituencies"), the revelation of knowledge about conflicting interests of participants, their personal disputes, or opinions about certain controversies, can disrupt such performances and undermine the deliberative efficacy of the assembly. I will therefore explore civil servants' uses of intentional concealment and display of ignorance, and deferral of negotiations into the future, as two strategies that help their diplomacy effectively engender general consensus not by resolving conflicts, but by not allowing them to "come up" in public meetings. I will examine these strategies in relation to other forms of negotiations that take place outside of formal assemblies.