Do freedom of information laws increase transparency of government? A replication of a field experiment

Authors

  • Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen Utrecht University
  • Peter John King's College, London
  • Albert Meijer Utrecht University
  • Ben Worthy Birkbeck University of London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.12.34

Keywords:

Openness, Local government, Information requests, Field experiment, Transparency, Freedom of Information

Abstract

Transparency and responsiveness are core values of democratic governments, yet do Freedom of Information Laws - one of the legal basis for such values - actually help to increase these values? This paper reports a replication of a field experiment testing for the responsiveness of public authorities by Worthy et al (2016) in the United Kingdom. We sent 390 information requests to Dutch local government bodies, half of which were framed as official FOIA requests, the other half as informal requests for information. We were able to reproduce the original findings, that is, we found a positive effect of FOIA requests on responsiveness. The overall response rate of local governments was much higher (76%) and the size of the effect was larger than in the original experiment. Furthermore, the strongest effect of FOI was found on proactive disclosure (concordance), something that governments - strictly speaking - are not obliged to do according to the Dutch FOIA. Implications for future replication studies are discussed.

Author Biographies

  • Peter John, King's College, London

    Professor of Public Policy

    Department of Political Economy, King’s College London

  • Albert Meijer, Utrecht University

    Professor of Public Innovation

    Utrecht University School of Governance, The Netherlands

  • Ben Worthy, Birkbeck University of London

    Lecturer in Politics

    Department of Politics, Birkbeck University of London

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Published

2019-01-01

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2019)

Section

Research Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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The CC-BY license applies also to data, code and experimental material, except when it conflicts with a prior copyright.  Common courtesy requires informing authors of new uses of their data, as well as acknowledging the source.

How to Cite

Do freedom of information laws increase transparency of government? A replication of a field experiment. (2019). Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.12.34

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