Whistleblowing is the public disclosure of information with the purpose of revealing
wrongdoings and abuses of power that harm the public interest. This book presents a
comprehensive theory of whistleblowing: it defines the concept reconstructs its origins
discusses it within the current ethical debate and elaborates a justification of unauthorized
disclosures. Its normative proposal is based on three criteria of permissibility: the
communicative constraints the intent and the public interest conditions. The book
distinguishes between two forms of whistleblowing civic and political showing how they apply
in the contexts of corruption and government secrecy.The book articulates a conception of
public interest as a claim concerning the presumptive interest of the public. It argues that
public interest is defined in opposition to corporate powers and its core content identified by
the rights that are all-purposive for the distribution of social benefits. A crucial part of
the proposal is dedicated to the impact of security policies and government secrecy on civil
liberties. It argues that unrestrained secrecy limits the epistemic entitlement of citizens to
know under which conditions their rights are limited by security policies and corporate
interests. When citizens are denied the right to assess when these policies are prejudicial to
their freedoms whistleblowing represents a legitimate form of political agency that safeguards
the fundamental rights of citizens against the threat of unrestrained secrecy by government
power.Finally the book contributes to shifting the attention of democratic theory from the
procedures of consent formation to the mechanisms that guarantee the expression of dissent. It
argues that whistleblowing is a distinctive form of civil dissent that contributes to the
demands of institutional transparency in constitutional democracies and explores the idea that
the way institutions are responsive to dissent determines the robustness of democracy and
ultimately its legitimacy. What place dissenters have within a society whether they enjoy
personal safety legal protection and safe channels for their disclosure are hallmarks of a
good democracy and of its sense of justice.
