This is another issue of our journal «Etica pubblica. Studi su legalità e partecipazione» written completely in English. It is in line with our original project to publish a genuinely international journal looking at the Italian situation in a comparative perspective: the essays that Benedetto Ponti has collected on the theme of transparency are inspired by this aim. Moreover they confirm another feature of our journal: the interdisciplinary approach. The theme of transparency is discussed here by scholars of different disciplines: students of law, political scientists, philosophers. I believe that in this way we may offer a more comprehensive view of an «opportunity» to improve our democracies. Indeed, there is no doubt that transparency can be named «an opportunity» as it is an instrument for the participation of the citizens to the life of the community: discussing the problems that transparency still meets in different contexts can contribute to improve citizens participation. At the same time, transparency is an «obligation» too: as stated in almost all of the essays collected in this issue it is a necessary qualification of a democratic regime. Such as Immanuel Kant suggested, there is no democracy without transparency. The essays of this present issue do not hide that transparency faces many problems: their investigation represents the contribution that «Etica Pubblica. Studi su Legalità e Partecipazione» may offer to the community of scholars and citizens. In this issue of the journal Benedetto Ponti takes care also of our section «Note e commenti» (usually edited by Nando dalla Chiesa) with an intervention of a journalist that passed through a «difficult» transparency experience. «Letti e riletti», edited by Francesco Clementi, collects reviews of the books of four associates of the journal: Enrico Carloni, Donatella Della Porta, Nando dalla Chiesa e Alberto Vannucci.