Informal institutions and government transparency: Evidence from a field experiment

• In Event: Policymaking Across Nations

Abstract

Improving government transparency has become one of the key themes of public administration practice, which helps to enhance public trust in government[1] and achieve better governance[2]. The government’s positive response to public information requests is an important aspect of government transparency[3, 4]. However, it is not yet clear what factors influence the public-oriented information disclosure of local governments in China and how to further improve the level of transparency of information disclosure.

This study conducted a randomized field experiment with prefecture-level administrative units in China to examine whether multiple stressors that public requests may rely on affect the level of information disclosure by local governments. We randomly divided these prefecture-level administrative units into four groups to request government documents through official channels, with the control group receiving only the base request and each of the three treatment groups receiving similar requests with the addition of different intervening representations[5, 6, 7]. By analyzing the responses of each local government, we found that the experimental interventions did not have a significant impact on local government information disclosure, and that it is the informal institution that is the key factor affecting the level of government information disclosure.

The results indicate that government transparency is promoted by both formal and informal institutions. When top-down political pressure has already left limited room for further improvement in government transparency, the role of informal institutions driven by bottom-up social forces becomes more prominent. In the future, it may be possible to provide additional impetus and complementary pathways for advancing government transparency through informal social mechanisms.

[1] Grimmelikhuijsen, S. G., & Meijer, A. J. (2014). Effects of transparency on the perceived trustworthiness of a government organization: Evidence from an online experiment. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 24(1), 137-157.
[2] Berliner, D. (2014). The political origins of transparency. The Journal of Politics, 76(2), 479-491.
[3] Cucciniello, M., Porumbescu, G. A., & Grimmelikhuijsen, S. (2017). 25 years of transparency research: Evidence and future directions. Public Administration Review, 77(1), 32-44.
[4] Darbishire, H. (2010). Proactive Transparency: The future of the right to information?. World Bank.
[5] Worthy, B., John, P., & Vannoni, M. (2017). Transparency at the parish pump: A field experiment to measure the effectiveness of freedom of information requests in England. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 27(3), 485-500.
[6] Peisakhin, L., & Pinto, P. (2010). Is transparency an effective anti‐corruption strategy? Evidence from a field experiment in India. Regulation & Governance, 4(3), 261-280.
[7] Yang, W., Qin, C., & Fan, B. (2022). Do institutional pressures increase reactive transparency of government? Evidence from a field experiment. Public Management Review, 1-20.

Author

• Jiali Wang, TIANJIN UNIVERSITY
  Presenting Author