For centuries, secrecy, not transparency, was the key to good government. Dating as far back as the 1400s ruthless Kings like Henry VIII, King James and King Charles would often find their chosen mandates overturned by a secret voice vote in Parliament. In response, they would storm into the chambers demanding a public vote. But once exposed, the members who had previously voted against the King switched their votes out of fear of jailings, torture, and beheadings. Thus the most powerful special interest in the world, the King, got his way by simply requesting for a little more sunshine.

After decades of such royal intimidation, the House of Commons, in the mid 1600s, finally pulled a parliamentary maneuver of their own. Relying on ancient norms which permitted committees to meet in secret, the members formed the first ever Committee of the Whole, a device which historian Robert Healy calls ‘a kind of procedural fiction.’ Unlike standard committees where a handful of select members would break off to investigate specific legislation, the Committee of the Whole was open to all members and could address all legislation. But, because it was a ‘committee’ it gained the privacy and protection that voting in the chamber did not have, and thus, no visitors or Kings were allowed and no records of member’s votes were kept.

For centuries, secrecy, not transparency, was the key to good government.

This privacy worked exceedingly well. It shielded the individual members of Parliament from the wrath of the executive (the King), allowing the legislators to exchange their views without fear of recrimination. And just years after instituting this secretive Committee of the Whole, the power dynamic of England flipped. In a subsequent altercation over more expensive layouts for the crown, the oppressive and murderous King Charles was hauled in by Parliament, where he was subsequently tried, indicted and executed. In response, the people of England applauded their suddenly secretive representative body, as the less accountable Parliament had finally begun to represent the people’s wishes.

Understandably, word of these grand secret committees traveled fast. And in short order, the colonies of New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut began to decide their most sensitive legislation behind the protections offered by this legislative device known as the Committee of the Whole. And, by the time the Founding Fathers set about drafting the U.S. Constitution, the benefits of closed door deliberations were baked into the concept of good government. Indeed, in the mid-to-late 1700s, these secret committees were all the rage as they proved invaluable for checking the power of intimidation by outside special interests, and they should secured at all costs.

As a result, the Founders drafted the Constitution in an atmosphere of near draconian secrecy. Behind heavy drapes, closed doors and armed sentries stationed both inside and outside, they purged records, whispered in code and burned documents. In the entire four months, no journalists, Kings, visitors or citizens were allowed. If a delegate happened to leave any notes outside the chamber, George Washington would get in their face with fury. Discretion was so important that even in the insufferable 90-degree heat of downtown Philadelphia, Ben Franklin would have rather died of heat stroke than crack a window.

The overarching reason for this secrecy was still the fear of intimidation – which included death threats by kings, slander in the press and the frequent public mobs who directed their wrath at individual legislators for their individual votes. But other tangential reasons began to crop up as well. Seasoned legislators, the Founders noticed a number of important problems with respect to deliberating in the glare of public scrutiny – problems which led them to declare that open meetings would destroy deliberations.

For starters, James Madison sought to form the best possible government. Thus, he looked to create a atmosphere where members of decidedly different biases and beliefs would be free to challenge themselves, ask questions and make mistakes – and perhaps most importantly – be open to each other’s opinions. For him, these goals could only be accomplished in an environment of secrecy. He wrote:

Had the members committed themselves publicly at first, they would have afterwards supposed consistency required them to maintain their ground, whereas by secret discussion no man felt himself obliged to retain his opinions any longer than he was satisfied of their propriety and truth, and was open to the force of argument.

It is hard to avoid the irony. Madison mentions the word ‘secret’ with the passion and conviction that a pro-transparency advocate might mention ‘sunshine’ today. And In this passage, we can see his concern with how open sessions might lead to what we now call partisanship and gridlock – conclusions which led him to claim that if the Convention had been open to the public, “no Constitution would ever have been adopted.”

The other Virginia delegate, George Mason, also noticed how transparency would lead to gridlock and hard-lining, arguing that a public record of the members’ opinions “would be an obstacle to a change of them on conviction.” But Mason, the cerebral namesake for the modern university in Virginia, went further. He feared that transparency would create acrimonious legislative warfare, where the publication of each individual action would do little but “furnish handles for the adversaries.”

Mason’s ideas align well with those of modern scholars like Frances Lee, who suggest that parties have powerful incentives to push for transparency not as a way to improve legislation, but instead as a way of weaponizing the process in order to make the other parties look bad. Again, these notions aren’t tiny, detailed problems. Harvard scholar David King claims that this ‘weaponized transparency’ not infects upwards of 90% of all current legislation – turning the vast majority of amendments into nothing more than political bombs.

Finally, there was Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the most staunch supporter of secrecy in American History. For his part, he focused specifically on the pernicious connection between transparency, parties and special interests (including Kings) – which he often referred to as factions. And like Madison, he considered transparency ruinous to the process. He wrote:

Had the deliberations been open while going on, the clamors of faction would have prevented any satisfactory result.

But Hamilton’s analysis leading up to this conclusion is chilling, and it applies readily to the abusive power of special interests today. For Hamilton there was a strong difference between the individual legislator and the whole. Likely recalling the dynamics of the Committee of the Whole in England, he noticed how previous votes conducted in the open chambers exposed each individual member to the wrath of any abusive outsider – be them the press, a King or a mob. Thus, he wrote that

Every infallible declaimer, taking his own ideas as the perfect standard, would have railed without measure or mercy at every member of the Convention who had gone a single line beyond his standard.

This line is essential to understand the Founders’ euphoria for secrecy. Note, that in this passage, Hamilton does not suggest that the ‘declaimer’ (his term here for any outside special interest) lashes out “without measure or mercy” at Congress or the entire legislative body. Instead, because of transparency, the declaimer viciously lashes out at the individual ‘member.’ But individual members have no individual powers. And so, if they are exposed, they can be taken to task individually by any outside group. And so while Hamilton is not necessarily saying that transparency is bad, he is saying that individual transparency is bad.

After all, every democratic legislative body in the world is transparent by default. All of its final decisions and outcomes are made public. This is the way it should be, and it is appears unlikely that anyone has ever suggested changing that. But the difference that Hamilton and the members of the House of Commons observed was that between the individual and the whole. For Hamilton, opening up the internal deliberations eliminates the notion of Congress itself, because it separates the powerful whole into powerless individuals. And so when it comes to legislatures, the sum is far greater than the parts.

Individual members ‘can be picked off one by one; they know it; they adjust their behavior accordingly.

And in this framework, the danger of transparency becomes clear because open door proceedings pits each individual member in an often lopsided battle with those in power. Instead of a clash between two equal branches (say Congress and the President), we get a handful of terrified members pitted in a battle with anyone in power – and that’s if we’re lucky. As occurred in England, when the votes were made public, there was often no battle at all – terrified of the King, the members members jumped to their feet and switched their votes. As scholar Anthony King writes of an open process, individual members ‘can be picked off one by one; they know it; they adjust their behavior accordingly.’”

Still, even in this colonial era of ‘good’ secrecy, not everyone was happy. And so while the general public appeared indifferent, the adversaries of the Convention – the Antifederalists in particular – were furious. Though it would still be two-hundred years before the word ‘transparency’ would be tethered to the idea of open government, the Antifederalists, in their quest to tear into the work of the Founders, argued precisely as we might expect a pro-transparency advocate might argue today. One dubbed the Founders the “evil geniuses of darkness.” Another wrote that “a government which originates in mystery…terminates in despotism.” And firebrand Patrick Henry, who had declined an appointment to join the Founders in the Convention, claimed that no government should be allowed to “carry on the most wicked and pernicious of schemes, under the dark veil of secrecy.” Thomas Jefferson expressed his concerns as well. Observing the proceedings from his post in France, he wrote that he was “sorry [the Founders] began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members. Nothing can justify this example but the innocence of their intentions, and ignorance of the value of public discussions.”

But these heated and biased pro-transparency protests bore little fruit. The “evil geniuses” stuck to their plan, writing the Constitution from start to finish behind some of the strictest rules of secrecy ever employed on American soil. More importantly, they became the first legislative body to codify secrecy right into the Constitution. Instead of shying away from the critics, they screamed back at them, making closed door deliberations a right. Their goal was to make sure that no King, President or other powerful entity would ever be able to deny Congress their legislative privacy again. They wrote:

Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy.

Overseas, the logic of the Founder’s constitutional secrecy was confirmed almost immediately by peculiar activities in France. In 1789, as advised by the pro-transparency advocate Thomas Jefferson, the French Assemblée Constituante (constitutional convention) was conducted in the sunshine. But the results were horrifying. On controversial issues, radical members frequently insisted on transparent votes precisely to scare their opponents into reversing their decisions. These tactics played to the mob or other special interests and often worked as their proponents expected. Indeed, one terrified deputy claimed to have voted against his convictions because “I do not want my wife and children to have their throats cut.”

And while this gory language might appear extreme or hyperbolic to the modern readers, it is important to recall that little has changed in the ensuing years. Today, legislators around the world receive frequent death threats and many are killed. Just in the past decade, two members of the US Congress have been shot (including a point blank execution-style attempt on Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona). And dozens of horrifying threats by members of the public have led to arrests and jail time. It would be ridiculous to think that the members of Congress do not consider these life-threatening scenarios when they vote – especially when anyone can see precisely how they vote.

But this bloody outsider intimidation wasn’t the only peculiarity in the French proceedings. In 2012, reviewing the deliberations of the Assemblée Constituante, the celebrated Norwegian scholar Jon Elster found that in the 20,000 pages of transcripts, not one member is on record for changing their minds on any topic, large or small, presented before the chamber. And so, instead of deliberating and deciding what might be best for their country, the members produced what reads like a 20,000 page harangue, full of grandstanding and hard-lining. This entrenched, partisan and inflexible form of ‘deliberation’ is precisely what terrified Madison, who saw the roots of hard-lining and partisanship in open deliberations. And so the proceedings of the French Assembly over two decades ago, eerily resemble the archives of CSPAN today. With the cameras rolling and the press recording, members like Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz rarely address the other members of the Senate in order to ask questions, build solutions or draft legislation. Instead, they bypass their colleagues, talking directly to the cameras (and the public at large) in poetic and grandiose language. Instead of crafting legislation, they are hard-lining and campaigning. Instead of building consensus, they are chasing votes.

Still, in the United States, the Founder’s obsession with secrecy held firm until 1913, when it hit a bit of, perhaps expected, turbulence. In that year, the ex-Princeton professor cum President, Woodrow Wilson wrote an eloquent piece called “Let There Be Light” where he laid out a broad argument for a massive increase in government transparency.

But it is difficult to discern Wilson’s true objective. Reminiscent of the rivalry between King Charles and parliament, Wilson – as head of the executive branch – was playing the role of the king, and he had never acted as a member of a legislature anywhere, and so had little of Hamilton’s first hand concerns. Further, his relationship with Congress was also fraught with conflict. Indeed, his piece on transparency can be viewed, instead of as a call for better government, as a direct attack on the secrecy of his recalcitrant legislature – already a thorn in the his side. Wilson wrote:

I am striving to indicate my belief that our legislative methods may well be reformed in the direction of giving more open publicity to every act… [and] of our legislative halls so that the people may know who is back of every bill and back of the opposition to it, and so that it may be dealt with in the open chamber rather than in the committee room. The light must be let in on all processes of law-making.

Indeed, American presidents have had a long history of benefiting from the pressure they apply to members of Congress on their public votes (this is a central theme of Steven Spielberg’s recent movie Lincoln). And so, it comes with some irony that the strongest pro-transparency voice of the early 1900s comes from Wilson, whose battles with his closed-door Congress weren’t just legendary, but they also likely led to his death. Unable to intimidate or cajole Congress, who formed most of its policy in secret committees, the aging Wilson was forced to take his ideas to the people. Instead of simply marching a few miles over to the Capitol building and demanding the members vote for provisions, as King Henry VIII might have done, Wilson was boarded a train in the mid of winter, addressing crowds of citizens in the snow, in an attempt to rally public support for his ideas. But, as Wilson surely knew, addressing and convincing the electorate is decidedly more difficult than putting the screws to a handful congressmen. And the end result of Wilson’s crusade was that the people didn’t care, Congress didn’t budge, Wilson got sick and died, and legislative secrecy prevailed.

Still, perhaps inspired by Wilson, Congress did consider a 1914 and 1916 proposal for electronic (recorded) votes in the Committee of the Whole. But in short order, the idea was shot down, as it was deemed that the transparency would exclusively benefit special interest groups and lobbyists – just as Alexander Hamilton suggested over a century earlier.

And so congressional secrecy continued its near 200 year reign. In today’s environment this notion would seem horrifying, because this means that the period was marked by a near abject lack of legislative accountability. Indeed, when John F. Kennedy and Barry Goldwater traded barbs as Senators in the late 1950s, the vast majority of their actions and proposals, as well as over 95% of their votes, were conducted in secret, behind closed doors. This was true during the Senate’s deliberations on civil rights and taxation (which still greatly favored the middle class and the poor) in the 1960s. And yet, instead of reacting in fury, the public was thrilled, and the period was marked by exceedingly high congressional approval.

Perhaps the only group that didn’t approve were the lobbyists. Indeed, corporate tobacco lawyer, Lewis Powell remarked just how terrible it was to be a corporate lobbyist at the time. He noted that corporations were all but ignored, and government instead passed aggressive legislation to protect consumers and the environment. But Powell didn’t realize precisely why lobbying so difficult, yet the answer resided in the name itself. From the writing of the Constitution until the late 1960s, a lobbyist was exactly what its name implied – someone who resided in the lobby. And so while Kennedy and Goldwater deliberated over unions and taxation inside closed chambers, the lobbyists were paced nervously outside the closed doors, unable to see who did what.

But then in the early 1970s, under Nixon and Carter, everything changed. In a rash of jarring reforms, Congress passed the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 which, all but rejected the notions of the Founders and the Constitution by throwing open the doors of all congressional committees – including the Committee of the Whole. And in a flash, the word ‘lobbyist’ lost all of its original meaning. For the first time in history, lobbyists were no longer relegated to the hallways and the lobbies, but instead were welcomed into even the most sensitive of all committees: the markup sessions, Ways and Means, Appropriations, Finance etc. And they came in in droves.