Abstract
This article discusses the routine processes of the construction of transparency policies to combat corruption in Brazil, based on field experiences in two organs of control. Its focus is not on the effectiveness of these policies but on the understanding of its specific moral dimension: how these values are incorporated in the daily practices of auditors. Pursuing a moral anthropology perspective for the understanding of the state, the aim is to understand, in the process of its constitution, the power logics realized in the ideal Transparent State. The difficulties encountered in the attempt to approach state bureaucracies and even to present academically the “results” of a world, characterized by a dilemma between secrecy on the one hand and “fictions” of transparency on the other, are employed as a way to understand the ambiguities in the constitution of a project which proposes “openness” or visibility of power.
Keywords:
transparency; states; morality; auditors