TY - JOUR
T1 - Which Countries Have More Open Governments? Assessing Structural Determinants of Openness
AU - Schnell, Sabina
AU - Jo, Suyeon
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Tina Nabatchi, Stuart Bretschneider, Ken Meier, and John McPeak for very helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. The authors are responsible for all mistakes and omissions. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
Copyright:
Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/11/1
Y1 - 2019/11/1
N2 - An increasing number of countries are adopting open government reforms, driven, in part, by the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a global effort dedicated to advancing such initiatives. Yet, there is still wide variation in openness across countries. We investigate the political, administrative, and civic factors that explain this variation, using countries’ fulfillment of OGP eligibility criteria as a proxy for minimum standards of openness. We find that countries with strong constraints on the executive and high levels of citizen education have governments that are more open. A dense network of civil society organizations is associated with more budget transparency and higher civil liberties, but not with access to information or asset disclosure laws. The results suggest that if the value of openness is to be translated in practice, it is not enough to have capable bureaucracies—countries also need informed citizens and strong oversight of executive agencies.
AB - An increasing number of countries are adopting open government reforms, driven, in part, by the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a global effort dedicated to advancing such initiatives. Yet, there is still wide variation in openness across countries. We investigate the political, administrative, and civic factors that explain this variation, using countries’ fulfillment of OGP eligibility criteria as a proxy for minimum standards of openness. We find that countries with strong constraints on the executive and high levels of citizen education have governments that are more open. A dense network of civil society organizations is associated with more budget transparency and higher civil liberties, but not with access to information or asset disclosure laws. The results suggest that if the value of openness is to be translated in practice, it is not enough to have capable bureaucracies—countries also need informed citizens and strong oversight of executive agencies.
KW - access to information
KW - global initiatives
KW - open government
KW - transparency
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U2 - 10.1177/0275074019854445
DO - 10.1177/0275074019854445
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85067885447
SN - 0275-0740
VL - 49
SP - 944
EP - 956
JO - American Review of Public Administration
JF - American Review of Public Administration
IS - 8
ER -