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The "transparency trend" is hot for the summer of 2011. At least that is what they said in the fashion capitals of Milan, Paris, and London. In the new summer collections, sheer seethrough dresses reveal the beauties of the human body and leave little to the imagination. Architects too are attracted by the intriguing properties of transparent materials to create a new perception of space and boundaries, which challenges some traditional understandings of private living and daily work life. Whereas in the past, it was a Puritan statement to live without curtains at the windows, to show you had nothing to hide, today, the transparent way of life is often used to enable the owner to display their wealth and luxury. Institutions have increasingly followed this transparency trend in fashion and architecture by using glass for their buildings. Transparency is not only a fashion trend, but also a political challenge. Fashion and politics meet in the huge glass buildings of the European Union in Brussels and Strasbourg, which reflect the Union's strategy to improve its democratic legitimacy; one of the main aims of the Lisbon Treaty (2009). In terms of adaption to this see-through trend, institutions are not only voluntarily moving towards greater transparency, they are being ambushed by those who believe that information is a public good, which should not be guarded by a few. By revealing "suppressed and censored injustices" (WikiLeaks, n.d.), WikiLeaks practices what some call "guerrilla transparency" (The Economist, 2010). When people think of transparency, the recent commotion caused by WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of documents on nationally and internationally sensitive issues is at the forefront of their minds. This event has triggered a worldwide debate on the balance between state security and citizens' right to know.

The concept of transparency can be applied to nearly every domain of human activity. In each of these diverse domains transparency is thought to provide the public with information in order to make reasoned judgements: be it information about who to vote for, who to employ, which medications to take, or which Non Governmental Organization to support. If people are sufficiently informed, the argument goes, they are able to hold political officials accountable, find more competent staff, and even punish mismanagement and corruption. As Bessire (2005) puts it, "transparency is strongly related to information – and information is power" (p. 429). This line of reasoning ignores the fact that the availability of information is not the only aspect of accountability. If the public does not know what is happening behind closed doors, it naturally has no incentive – and indeed no chance – to hold somebody accountable necessary. As well as having access to relevant information, people must have measures at their disposal to punish responsible actors.

If you search for ´transparency´ on an internet search engine, it will provide more than 87 million hits to choose from. By clicking through the results, a diverse variety of types of transparency can be found, ranging from governmental or state transparency to transparency in the financial sector to transparency in sports. While some hits provide state or corporate policies on transparency, others refer to organizations that push for increased openness of organizations. Transparency is a concept that can be applied to a broad variety of different situations and domains in our social, political and economic world, often making it difficult to grasp clearly defined conditions. Since transparency seemingly illustrates a concept with unparalleled possibilities of application, it was referred to as a ´buzzword´ throughout this volume. The contributions of this volume sought, however, to give more substance to the 'buzzword'. In which fields of social life do matters of transparency come up? What specific role does it play? Do we understand it in an instrumental or consequential way? Who or what is at the focal point of transparency – individuals, public persons, institutions or professions? The answers to these questions, which seek to define the characteristics and criteria of transparency, and the expectations attached to the concept will differ from case to case. What is needed, therefore, is further refinement of what is actually meant when speaking about transparency. Such refinement is inevitably context-based. This is exactly what this volume aimed to do: it analyzes the concept of transparency within specific cases and attempts to show what implications it can have for individuals, politics, social media, international development aid and the pharmaceutical industry. In this regard, the approaches of our authors followed the rationale that transparency is not to be understood as a value in itself, but as instrumental in achieving specific objectives.