Research: “When Does Transparency Generate Legitimacy? Experimenting on a Context-Bound Relationship,” by Jenny De Fine Licht, Daniel Naurin, Peter Esaiasson, Mikael Gilljam. A summary of the article:
We analyze the main rationale for public administrations and political institutions for supplying transparency, namely, that it generates legitimacy for these institutions. First, we discuss different theories of decision making from which plausible causal mechanisms that may drive a link between transparency and legitimacy may be derived. We find that the common notion of a straightforward positive correlation is naïve and that transparency reforms are rather unpredictable phenomena. Second, we test the effect of transparency on procedure acceptance using vignette experiments of representative decision making in schools. We find that transparency can indeed generate legitimacy. Interestingly, however, the form need not be “fishbowl transparency,” with full openness of the decision-making process. Decision makers may improve their legitimacy simply by justifying carefully afterward the decisions taken behind closed doors. Only when behavior close to a deliberative democratic ideal was displayed did openness of the process generate more legitimacy than closed-door decision making with postdecisional justifications.
Research: An article in Forbes describes research on what kind of transparency increases faith in government overall? The research is by Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School.
The summary of the article says:
Specifically, they present the results of an experiment in which Boston-area residents interacted with a website that visualized the service requests submitted by members of the public and the City’s efforts to address those requests. Does seeing the work of government—fixing potholes, repairing streetlamps, removing graffiti, collecting garbage—lead citizens to express more positive attitudes toward government and increase their support for maintaining and expanding the scale of government programs? The study shows that providing greater operational transparency into government’s efforts to address citizens’ needs can improve attitudes toward government. Key concepts include:
- Increasing the operational transparency of government services—showing citizens the work in which government is engaging on their behalf—engenders positive attitudes toward government and greater support for maintaining or expanding the scale of government programs.
- In the absence of transparency, constituent awareness of and appreciation for the services government provides may suffer.
Environment: Interview with Yeling Tan, Harvard Kennedy School, on the Governance blog about her article, “Transparency without Democracy: The Unexpected Effects of China’s Environmental Disclosure Policy.” She says, “Information disclosure by itself won’t automatically lead to change.” In the article she analyzes the complex pathways through which the Chinese government’s 2008 Open Environmental Information (OEI) measures have impacted stakeholders such as citizens, businesses, and non-government organizations (NGOs) and MNCs.”
Procurement: Plans to create the first-ever “Open Contracting Data Standard” have been announced. “The development of a common standard for the disclosure of contracting data is a key pillar of the work of the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) to promote disclosure and participation in public contracting – empowering citizens around the world to hold their governments to account for the estimated US $9.5 trillion they spend each year through contracts.
Procurement: An article on reforms in the procurement system of Georgia by Mathias Huter and Giorgi Chanturia.
India: A list of notable opinions from 2013, prepared by Vishal Mishra.
India: A short video in Hindi about the Indian RTI act.
United Kingdom: A new publication “illustrates the benefits of the UK?s Freedom of Information Act and the related Environmental Information Regulations. It describes significant FOI disclosures on a range of issues. The publication will be updated periodically. It follows two earlier reports by the Campaign for Freedom of Information, summarizing 500 stories from the FOI Act?s first year and 1000 stories from 2006 and 2007.
Commentary: A lengthy discussion about leaks by David Cole in The New York Review of Books, entitled “The Three Leakers and What to Do About Them.”
European Union: The European Year of Citizens Alliance (EYCA), a network of European and national civil society organizations issues “It’s about Us, It’s about Europe!”
Employment: The Transparency and Accountability Initiative is seeking “a program officer with a passion for strengthening the effective use of information technologies to improve transparency, accountability and participation (TAP), primarily focussed on governments and companies.” Email a cover letter and CV before Feb. 7, 2014, to recruitment-ia@
Employment: Aid Transparency is advertising a short term vacancy for a Research Assistant to support with data collection and research for the Aid Transparency Index. This is a short term consultancy for 4 months. More details about the role and how to apply are on the website.
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