Disclosure, Opacity and Delay

• In Event: Information and Accountability

Abstract

Disclosure of information pertaining to social welfare is a central public good provided by states. However, states face a number of incentives to withhold information from the public, even when that information is readily available to the government. In some instances, states may sometimes withhold this information indefinitely (opacity); in others, they simply choose to release information in a less than timely manner (delay). In this paper, we examine the interplay between opacity and delay using two new datasets. The first is an update of the HRV Transparency Index, which measures data disclosure using the missingness of information from the current World Development Indicators (WDI). The second is a dataset we refer to as the Legacy HRV Index, which measures the missingness of information from contemporaneous editions of the WDI. The HRV Index thus captures opacity, whereas, the gap between the HRV and Legacy HRV measures information that is initially withheld but eventually released -- i.e., the extent of delay. We anticipate that this gap will be largest for states that democratize over the period under examination -- revealing that autocracies collect information that they choose to withhold from the public. This information is then disclosed by democratic successors. We further anticipate that measures of delay will rise for states experiencing crises that plausibly diminish state capacity: wars and natural disasters. However, we anticipate that delay should exhibit no such systematic pattern with more 'typical' adverse events which may be blamed on the government -- e.g., periods of low growth. Delay is an ineffectual mechanism for governments to dodge accountability for poor performance.

Authors

• James R. Hollyer, University of Minnesota

• B. Peter Rosendorff, New York University

• James Raymond Vreeland, Princeton University