State Secrecy: A Literature Review

Abstract

What is secrecy? What is a state secret? Which state secrets deserve protection from disclosures? How are state secrets protected from disclosure? In this review, I use these questions as an organizing framework to review the richness of a very disparate, largely US-centric, but also multidisciplinary literature. In doing so, I highlight the social nature of secrecy that it is a social construct with social effects and consequences and the need for further research to unveil those rationalities that specific discourses on state secrecy put forward to legitimize the nondisclosure of state secrets.