There is without doubt a radical difference between the culture of open government in Sweden and the until recently prevailing culture of secrecy in Britain and within the European Union. From a classic British sceptic’s perspective, “public access to official documents is deemed unnecessary, since British democracy has functioned for so long without it”. The British “have always relied heavily, although not always successfully, on the concept of ‘ministerial responsibility’ to Parliament in order to secure public trust in government”. The mainstream of eighteenth-century British political thought held that the nation’s political well-being required the foundation of an informed gentleman citizenry. By the middle decades of the eighteenth-century, the movement away from the idea of a citizenry composed exclusively of gentlemen was firmly established on both sides of the Atlantic. It became increasingly acknowledged that men of the “meaner sort” should have the right to hold opinions on public affairs and ought to be allowed to protest against governments and laws they deemed improper.
Informal mental health patients: what are they told of their legal rights?