[P2P-F] Open Government and Democracy

[Michel Bauwens]

  Tiago Peixoto posted: "The International Budget Partnership (IBP) has
recently released the results of the Open Budget Survey 2012, which
measures “the state of budget transparency, participation and oversight in
100 countries around the world”. In the survey report, the author"    Respond
to this post by replying above this line
      New post on *DemocracySpot*
<http://democracyspot.net/author/tiagopeixoto/>  Open Government
and Democracy<http://democracyspot.net/2013/03/07/open-government-and-democracy/>
by
Tiago Peixoto <http://democracyspot.net/author/tiagopeixoto/>

The International Budget Partnership (IBP) has recently released the
results of the Open Budget Survey
2012<http://internationalbudget.org/what-we-do/open-budget-survey/>,
which measures “the state of budget transparency, participation and
oversight in 100 countries around the world”. In the survey report, the
authors highlighted the positive relationship between budget transparency
and democracy:

A democratic political system is a significant factor that supports budget
transparency (...) In fact, a switch from autocracy to democracy is
typically associated with an improvement in a country’s OBI score by almost
20 points, after controlling for other variables. In addition, transparency
seems to depend much more on current levels of democracy than on how long a
country has been a democracy: for countries in transition, this means that
rapid improvements in transparency can be achieved without having to wait
for slow processes of learning and adaptation.

This adds to a growing body of literature showing that democracies (and
electoral competition) are indeed more transparent than other types of
regime. If the relationship between democracy and openness comes across as
obvious, it also opens space for some questions about the open government
movement and its strategy to promote transparency.

[image: Screen Shot 2013-03-07 at
00.42.12]<http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world>

Political Rights and Civil Liberties in 2013 - Freedom House

Transparency, it seems, is one of the vital signs of well-functioning
democracies. Chronic lack of transparency, on the other hand, emerges as
the symptom of flawed democracies or authoritarian regimes. If this logic
is correct (and the evidence suggests it is) advocating for transparency
would correspond to treating the symptoms of a disease, rather than
preventing it in the first place.

This is not to say that promoting transparency reforms (e.g. open data,
open budgets) is a useless act. Treating a symptom is not a problem in
itself: it alleviates the pain and may even prevent further complications.
But neglecting to treat the cause of the symptom is surely a bad practice.

This begs a fundamental question: are open government advocates efficiently
channelling their energy and resources when asking for more transparency
from governments that have little or no inclination to democracy? Or are
they failing to strike a balance which combines a focus on transparency
with more fundamental reforms that promote, for instance, free, fair and
competitive elections?

Granted, transparency and democracy are mutually reinforcing: it is
difficult to think of a democracy without informed consent. And even
well-established democracies still have a long way to go towards more
transparency. But, for instance, going as far as
considering<http://www.quora.com/Does-open-government-require-a-democracy>that
open government may blossom in non-democracies seems questionable to
me. All the technology and transparency in the world is unlikely to realize
its full potential in the absence of fundamental political rights and civil
liberties.

It might be time to start focusing on the role that political regimes play
in promoting values that are dear to the open government movement, such as
transparency, participation and collaboration. And democracy – or lack
thereof – is the elephant in the room.

***

Further reading

*Alt, J. E., Lassen, D. D., & Rose, S. (2005). "The causes of
fiscal transparency: Evidence from the US States." IMF Staff
Papers, 53(Special Issue),
30–57.<http://www.imf.org/external/np/res/seminars/2005/arc/pdf/alt.pdf>
*

Alt, J. E., & Lowry, R. C. (2010). "Transparency and accountability:
Empirical results for US States." Journal of Theoretical Politics, 22(4),
379–406.<http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9468172/Alt_Transparency.pdf?sequence=1>

Hollyer, J. R., Rosendorff, B. P., & Vreeland, J. R. (2011). "Democracy
and transparency." Journal of Politics, 73(4),
1191–1205.<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1750824>

Rosendorff, B. Peter, and James Raymond Vreeland. (2004). “Democracy and
Data Dissemination: The Effect of Political Regime on Transparency.”
Working Paper, Yale.
<http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jrv24/transparency.html>

Rosendorff, B. Peter and Doces, John A. (2006). "Democracy and
Transparency". Swiss Political Science Review, 12 (3),
99-112.<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1003053>

Wehner, J. and de Renzio, P. (2013) "Citizens, Legislators, and Executive
Disclosure: The Political Determinants of Fiscal Transparency." World
Development, 41, 96-108. <http://personal.lse.ac.uk/wehner/obi.pdf>
  *Tiago Peixoto <http://democracyspot.net/author/tiagopeixoto/>* | March
7, 2013 at 12:44 pm | Categories: Budget
Transparency<http://democracyspot.net/?cat=4450881>,
democracy <http://democracyspot.net/?cat=43837>,
elections<http://democracyspot.net/?cat=31174>,
governance <http://democracyspot.net/?cat=16505>, Open
Budgets<http://democracyspot.net/?cat=45013723>,
Open Government <http://democracyspot.net/?cat=35173009>,
transparency<http://democracyspot.net/?cat=636>| URL:
http://wp.me/p2Hk8h-8a

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