Developing and Testing a Theoretical Framework for Computer‐Mediated Transparency of Local Governments

This article contributes to the emerging literature on transparency by developing and empirically testing a theoretical framework that explains the determinants of local government Web site transparency. It aims to answer the following central question: What institutional factors determine the different dimensions of government transparency? The framework distinguishes three dimensions of transparency—decision making transparency, policy information transparency, and policy outcome transparency—and hypothesizes three explanations for each: organizational capacity, political influence, and group influence on government. Results indicate that each dimension of transparency is associated with different factors. Decision‐making transparency is associated with political influence; when left‐wing parties are strong in the local council, local government tends to be more transparent. Policy information transparency is associated with media attention and external group pressure, and policy outcome transparency is associated with both external group pressure and the organizational capacity. The authors discuss the implications for policy and administration.     

Politics of E‐Government: E‐Government and the Political Control of Bureaucracy

This case study reports an innovative e‐government experiment by a local government in Seoul, South Korea—Gangnam‐gu. A new local political leadership in Gangnam made strategic use of e‐government applications to exert greater political control over the local civil service bureaucracy. The authors find that e‐government applications possess political properties that can be applied effectively by the political leadership as instruments to improve control over the government bureaucracy as well as to enhance essential government accountability and transparency. The political circumstances underlying e‐government development as well as its impact on local government are reported, along with key variables associated with this innovation and directions for future research.     

Open Data for Science,Policy, and the Public Good

Supporters of open data believe that free and complete access to research data is beneficial for science, public policy, and society. In environmental science and policy, open data systems can enable relevant research and inform evidence‐based governmental decisions. This article examines the unlikely case of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research's transition toward an open data model. Considering Brazil's young democracy, incipient practice of government transparency and accountability, and lacking a tradition of science‐policy dialogue, this case is a striking example of how open data can support public debate by making information about forest cover widely available. The case shows the benefits and challenges of developing such open data systems, and highlights the various forms of accessibility involved in making data available to the public.     

On the Development of Public–Private Partnerships in Transitional Economies: An Explanatory Framework

This article develops a generic framework to explain the environment for public–private partnership (PPP) development in transitional economies. The framework stands on a tripod that includes the market, the operating environment, and the government, each containing several factors that support aspects of PPPs. The authors apply the framework to analyze the results of a multicountry survey in an effort to identify key factors that facilitate PPP development in transition countries. The identified factors are market potential, institutional guarantee, government credibility, financial accessibility, government capacity, consolidated management, and corruption control. The framework and identified factors may serve as effective tools to diagnose and monitor PPP development in a broader array of countries. The framework is applied in analyzing data from four transitional economies and several advanced economies. The efficacy of the framework is further justified by its explanatory power of PPPs’ practicality and is largely confirmed by results from a sensitivity test.     

The Impact of Management Capacity on Government Innovation in Korea: An Empirical Study

ABSTRACT

A common assertion within public management is that management capacity drives policy outcomes. This study tests that argument, focusing on an important policy outcome—innovation. Data were drawn from the Korean government to examine the impact of government's management capacity for the adoption and implementation of innovation. The results confirm that both managerial behaviors and structures are drivers of government innovation. The adoption and implementation of innovative projects require full-scale management capacity, encompassing innovative leadership, a quality workforce, appropriate structures/systems, and the ability to manage external influences. These results suggest that public management capacity drives innovation in government by changing managerial behaviors and structures. Implications of these results for managing government innovation are discussed.     

E‐Participation and Environmental Protection: Are Local Governments Really Committed?

There is widespread acceptance that current institutions are inadequate to address the challenges of sustainable development. At the same time, there is an urgent need to build awareness and increase capacity for promoting action with respect to environmental protection at the local level. This article analyzes the Web sites of the environment departments of European local governments that signed the Aalborg Commitments to determine the extent to which they are using the Internet to promote e‐participation in environmental topics and to identify the drivers of these developments. Potential drivers are public administration style, urban vulnerability, external pressures, and local government environmental culture. Findings confirm that e‐participation is a multifaceted concept. External pressures influence the transparency of environmental Web sites, while public administration style and local government environmental culture influence their interactivity.     

Institutions, Policy Innovation, and E-Government in the American States

Examining the rankings of American states in one fast‐growing policy area, e‐government, states with the most sophisticated and comprehensive policies varied over a five‐year period. What factors account for change in digital government policy innovation over time? Using time‐series analysis and 50‐state data, the authors find that state institutional capacity is important for continued innovation. They also find an association between reinvention in state governments and the institutionalization of information technology, suggesting a more general orientation toward government reform and modernization. Although state wealth and education were not significant in previous studies, they emerge as predictors of later innovation. The theoretical contribution of this study is to better understand the dynamic character of innovation over time and the role of institutions. The link between reinvention and e‐government raises the possibility that the modernization of state institutions generally facilitates innovation.     

Public Financial Management Systems and Countries' Governance: A Cross‐Country Study

The objective of this study is to explore whether a relationship exists between public financial management (PFM) systems and expert perceptions of countries' governance in an international cross‐country study. We examine the extent to which variations in accounting, budgeting and auditing practices are associated with governance in a sample of 97 countries that represent different levels of development, analysing the differences between countries classified into factor, efficiency and innovation‐driven economies. Our concept of governance perception includes three dimensions: accountability, government effectiveness and corruption. We find that countries with a higher level of economic development show, on average, more sophisticated PFM systems characterized by the presentation of accrual‐based financial statements, the application of value for money audits and higher budget transparency. When analysing the sub‐samples of countries according to the level of economic development, we find that countries with similar governance perception scores show different patterns of PFM practices, suggesting that there is no one‐size‐fits‐all approach. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

E‐Participation,Transparency, and Trust in Local Government

This article examines the relationship between electronic participation (e‐participation) and trust in local government by focusing on five dimensions of the e‐participationprocess: (1) satisfaction with e‐participation applications, (2) satisfaction with government responsiveness to e‐participants, (3) e‐participants’ development through the participation, (4) perceived influence on decision making, and (5) assessment of government transparency. Using data from the 2009 E‐Participation Survey in Seoul Metropolitan Government, this article finds that e‐participants’ satisfaction with e‐participation applications is directly associated with their development and their assessment of government transparency. The findings reveal that e‐participants’ satisfaction with government responsiveness is positively associated with their perceptions of influencing government decision making. Furthermore, there is a positive association between e‐participants’ perception of influencing government decision making and their assessment of government transparency. Finally, the article finds that there is a positive association between e‐participants’ assessment of government transparency and their trust in the local government providing the e‐participation program.     

The Politics of Local Government Stabilization Funds

The adoption, maintenance, and prudent use of budgetary stabilization funds are fundamental financial management precepts, yet the variables that influence the size of these funds are poorly understood. This article contributes to the stabilization fund literature by examining the extent to which variation in stabilization fund balances across municipalities and over time can be explained by a community's political culture and financial management capacity. The balanced panel research design includes archival data for 239 Massachusetts municipalities for each of 18 fiscal years. Stabilization fund balances are lower in communities with either an anti‐tax or a pro‐spending political culture. Stabilization fund balances are higher in communities that have the financial management capacity to accumulate budget surpluses that can be made available for appropriation to stabilization funds. Communities with the open town meeting form of government also have higher stabilization fund balances.     

25 Years of Transparency Research: Evidence and Future Directions

This article synthesizes the cross‐disciplinary literature on government transparency. It systematically reviews research addressing the topic of government transparency published between 1990 and 2015. The review uses 187 studies to address three questions: (1) What forms of transparency has the literature identified? (2) What outcomes does the literature attribute to transparency? and (3) How successful is transparency in achieving those goals? In addressing these questions, the authors review six interrelated types of transparency and nine governance‐ and citizen‐related outcomes of transparency. Based on the findings of the analysis, the authors outline an agenda for future research on government transparency and its effects that calls for more systematically investigating the ways in which contextual conditions shape transparency outcomes, replicating studies with varying methodologies, investigating transparency in neglected countries, and paying greater attention to understudied claims of transparency such as improved decision making and management.     

Levels of Value Integration in Federal Agencies' Mission and Value Statements: Is Open Government a Performance Target of U.S. Federal Agencies?

The Barack Obama administration advanced open government initiatives to make federal administration more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. Yet a question remains whether federal administrators took notice. This article examines changes in the extent to which U.S. federal agencies have integrated the three core principles of open government—transparency, public participation, and collaboration—into their performance planning. By analyzing 337 annual performance plans of 24 major federal agencies from fiscal years 2001 to 2016, the authors found that, overall, the level of integration of open government into performance planning has been trending higher since the early 2000s. During the Obama presidency, integration initially rose sharply but later declined. Findings also show that agencies' stated core values regarding open government are not consistently integrated into their performance plans. The implications of these findings for incorporating democratic‐constitutional values into holistic performance management are considered.     

Benefiting from Public Sector Innovation: The Moderating Role of Customer and Learning Orientation

This article examines whether the payoff from engaging in innovation‐generating activities is contingent on an organization's level of customer and learning orientation. The authors suggest that innovative activity is associated with higher public service quality when the level of customer and learning orientation within the focal organization is high. They test this hypothesis by drawing on a novel panel data set covering all public nonspecialist hospital organizations in England. Using dynamic panel data estimation techniques, the authors find strong support for a direct relationship between innovative activity and public service quality and for a moderating role of both customer and learning orientation. These findings call for a contingency perspective on public sector innovation and highlight some of the boundary conditions that need to be in place if public service organizations are to benefit fully from their innovative activities.     

Mega‐Disasters and Federalism

Measured in dollar terms, Hurricane Katrina was the worst natural disaster in American history. Mega‐disaster response recovery and mitigation put federalism to an especially difficult test because they require speed, efficiency, decisiveness, and effective coordination. This essay focuses on the response to and recovery from Katrina in order to probe the implications of mega‐disasters for federalism. It understands federalism as being composed of four dimensions: the three levels of government and the civic realm. It tests key defenses of federalism against civic and government performance during Katrina. It offers examples of successes and failures involving all four dimensions and provides specific recommendations for improving mega‐disaster mitigation, response, and recovery while maintaining an appropriate constitutional balance among the three levels of government and between the civilian government and the military.     

Understanding Employee Motivation to Innovate: Evidence from Front Line Employees in United States Federal Agencies

In a period of ongoing public sector reform in the United States (US), federal government agencies have been pushed to find new ways of performing their public functions more effectively and efficiently. Frontline public sector employees are a particularly vital source of innovations in organisational function and form. This study seeks to identify factors that motivate front line employees in the US federal bureaucracy to engage in innovative behaviour. The empirical analysis is based on data from the 2006 Federal Human Capital Survey. The results show that a constellation of factors encourage bottom‐up innovation, including the expectancy of innovation being rewarded, employee training and development, employee empowerment and involvement in decision‐making, and high‐exchange dyadic relationships with supervisors.     

Looking for Sustainability in Not‐for‐Profit Program Delivery: An Experiment in Providing Post‐Bushfire Recovery Programs

This article examines an experiment in delivering services and programs in communities that were affected by the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Three not‐for‐profit agencies received funding to develop and deliver programs over a period of three years with the aim of achieving sustainability for the programs thus created. They were not constrained by the requirements of normal government funding, which is short term, subject to competitive tendering and targeted at specific programs and client groups. The nature of the funding allowed the three agencies to introduce innovative programs tailored to the needs of the community and with the aim of building community capacity. However the question of whether the programs are sustainable when existing funding runs out remains open.     

Politics of Disclosure: Organizational Transparency as Multiactor Negotiation

Transparency is in vogue, yet it is often used as an umbrella concept for a wide array of phenomena. More focused concepts are needed to understand the form and function of different phenomena of visibility. In this article, the authors define organizational transparency as systematic disclosure programs that meet the information needs of other actors. Organizational transparency, they argue, is best studied as an interorganizational negotiation process on the field level. To evaluate its merit, the authors apply this framework to a case study on the introduction of open data in the Berlin city administration. Analyzing the politics of disclosure, they consider the similarities and differences between phenomena of visibility (e.g., open data, freedom of information), explore the transformative power of negotiating transparency, and deduce recommendations for managing transparency.     

Transparency in multilateral climate politics: Furthering (or distracting from) accountability?

This article analyzes the interplay between transparency and accountability in multilateral climate politics. The 2015 Paris Agreement calls for a “pledge‐and‐review” approach to collective climate action with an “enhanced transparency framework” as a key pillar of the Agreement. By making visible who is doing what, transparency is widely assumed to be vital to holding countries to account and building trust. We explore whether transparency is generating such effects in this context, by developing and applying an analytical framework to examine the link between transparency and accountability. We find that the scope and practices of climate transparency reflect (rather than necessarily reduce) broader conflicts over who should be held to account to whom and about what, with regard to responsibility and burden sharing for ambitious climate action. We conclude that the relationship between transparency and accountability is less straightforward than assumed, and that the transformative promise of transparency needs to be reconsidered in this light.     

Understanding the role of technology in reducing corruption: a transaction cost approach

Prior research suggests that computerization of government services can help reduce corruption involved in government transactions, but there is no clear understanding of the process through which computer‐mediated transactions reduce corruption. We attempt to fill this gap by using a transaction cost economics framework, and argue that uncertainty and asset specificity associated with government transactions allow bureaucrats to act opportunistically and demand bribes. Therefore, those computerization initiatives that reduce uncertainty and asset specificity of government services lead to lowered perceptions of corruption. Our findings, based on a survey of 101 managers of domestic and multinational enterprises in India, support our hypotheses. We also compare the websites of Indian government organizations with European government websites on the dimensions of transparency and interactivity, and find that the Indian websites do not provide as much interactivity as the European websites. Our multi‐method study offers important theoretical and practical insights on effectively using technology to reduce corruption. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Transparency on Trust in Government: A Cross‐National Comparative Experiment

Transparency is considered a key value for trustworthy governments. However, the effect of transparency on citizens’ trust across national cultures is overlooked in current research. This article compares the effect of transparency on trust in government in the Netherlands and South Korea. The effect is investigated in two similar series of three experiments. The authors hypothesize that the effect of transparency differs because the countries have different cultural values regarding power distance and short‐ and long‐term orientation. Results reveal similar patterns in both countries: transparency has a subdued and sometimes negative effect on trust in government. However, the negative effect in South Korea is much stronger. The difference in the magnitude of transparency's effect suggests that national cultural values play a significant role in how people perceive and appreciate government transparency.