(iPoster) Courts and the Politics of Access-to-Information Law in Authoritarian Regimes

• In Event: Poster Session: Democracy and Autocracy I

Abstract

This paper examines how courts implement access-to-information (ATI) laws in authoritarian regimes, drawing on an original dataset of judicial decisions in information-disclosure cases. While ATI laws formally commit governments to transparency, their actual operation depends on how courts interpret and enforce these rules when requests conflict with political interests. I argue that authoritarian courts apply transparency law in a selective and politically differentiated manner. Courts are more likely to compel disclosure when cases involve routine administrative information and lower-level bureaucratic agencies, but they systematically defer to the state when requests target politically sensitive actors, powerful institutions, or information with potential reputational or mobilizational consequences.

Building on the framework of legal dualism, I show that ATI litigation is channeled into two parallel legal logics: a rule-bound legal sphere that disciplines ordinary bureaucrats and an extralegal sphere that protects core political authority from scrutiny. Through quantitative analysis of case outcomes and qualitative analysis of judicial reasoning, the paper demonstrates how courts translate political priorities into legal doctrine by invoking exceptions such as state secrecy, administrative discretion, and public interest.

The findings challenge the view that transparency laws in autocracies are merely symbolic or irrelevant. Instead, I show that they play a dual role: expanding legal oversight over parts of the bureaucracy while simultaneously stabilizing authoritarian control by limiting politically dangerous disclosure. This perspective helps explain why authoritarian regimes adopt transparency legislation and why citizens continue to litigate under it despite low odds of success in politically sensitive cases.

Author

• Unregistered Participant