How to Do Agency Resources Matter to Government Reactive Transparency?: Evidence from National-Scale Information Requests in China

• In Event: Institutional Design and Civic Engagement in China

Abstract

This study aims to contribute to the literature on bureaucratic responsiveness based on the theoretical view of the legitimacy-management costs by testing the influences of legal regulative pressure, social normative pressure, and professional normative pressures on public agencies’ responses to freedom of information (FOI) requests. This study conducted a national-scale field experiment by FOI sending requests to 989 provincial agencies in China. Based on textual records of interactions and response results, the findings confirm that legal regulative pressure increases bureaucratic responsiveness regarding timeliness, quality, and openness. Further, social normative pressure enhances the timeliness and quality of responsiveness, whereas professional normative pressure promotes agency openness

Author

• Wenting Yang, Nankai University