History: An article in Journal of Democracy by Brazil-based Greg Michener explores the origins of FOI laws (or not) in Mexico, Argentina, Bulgaria and India. He concludes that it takes “extraordinary conditions” to pass FOI laws. “The presence of absence of basic political preconditions, such as propitious legislative dynamics and a pubic-spirited news media, can help drive laws forward or hold them back,” he writes. He ends with observations about the necessary preconditions, which he says need to be better understood, and suggests that the technological trends which have given rise to open-data campaigns is an encouraging development for FOI advocacy.
Media/Access: Focusing on the cases of Mexico and Argentina, while also looking at other experiences, a new World Bank Governance Working paper identifies the different ways in which media practitioners—including journalists, editors, owners, etc.—have engaged in the promotion, implementation and monitoring of access to information legislation. Targeted for practitioners working in governance and transparency issues and as part of its Governance Working Paper series, the World Bank Institute has recently published a seventh working paper on ATI, which addresses the relationship between ATI legislation and the press. This paper is available in Spanish only.
“Libertad de Información ¿Tres Palabras Inofensivas? Leyes de acceso a la información y el rol de la prensa” by Eduardo Bertoni, Director of the Center for Freedom of Expression and Access to Information Studies (CELE) at Argentina’s Universidad de Palermo, Law School
WikiLeaks: The Illusion of Transparency, a paper by Alasdair Roberts. The abstract says in part: “Boosters of WikiLeaks have overestimated the scale and significance of the leaks. They have also overlooked many ways in which the simple logic of radical transparency – leak, publish, and wait for the inevitable outrage – can be defeated in practice. WikiLeaks only created the illusion of a new era in transparency. In fact the 2010 leaks revealed the obstacles to achievement of increased transparency, even in the digital age.”
Resource Transparency: Avoiding the Resource Curse. By Peter Veit, Carole Excell, and Alysa Zomer. A working paper on whether new rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could help bring transparency to Uganda’s oil industry.
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