They Talk the Talk – But Do They Walk the Walk?

Authors

  • Gissur Ó Erlingsson Center for Municipality Studies, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Emanuel Wittberg Center for Municipality Studies and the Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University, Sweden

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v22i4.8692

Keywords:

right to information, access to information, transparency, accountability, new public management

Abstract

Transparency is recognized as a crucial condition for accountability, good governance and democracy. As right to information (RTI) laws have spread, it is crucial to ask whether ambitious legislative frameworks translate to de facto transparency. In this article, we test how well local governments in Sweden – a ‘most-likely country’ for implementing RTI-laws – comply with its comparatively ambitious Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act. As a side-effect, we also gauge if New Public Management-reforms, here illustrated by increased public ownership of enterprises in local government, implies lessened compliance with RTI-legislation. Requesting information from 462 randomly selected public administrations and municipally owned enterprises, counter-intuitive findings are observed. Less than half of the organizations respected the RTI-legislation, and no significant differences were found between the public administrations and publicly owned enterprises. The findings have methodological as well as empirical implications. They highlight the importance of not only studying legislative frameworks, but also analyzing actual implementation of RTI-frameworks in everyday situations. Also, they demonstrate that problems relating to openness can be observed in low-corrupt, mature democracies with strong bureaucratic capacity that traditionally are hailed for their long history of ambitious RTI-laws. Lastly, and contrary to much popular belief, the findings indicate that publicly owned corporations not necessarily do imply a ‘accountability deficit’.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Gissur Ó Erlingsson, Center for Municipality Studies, Linköping University, Sweden

Gissur Ó Erlingsson is an associate professor in political science at the Center for Municipality Studies, Linköping University. His research is on corruption and public ethics, particularly in local government, as well as on political participation and local self-government.

 

Emanuel Wittberg, Center for Municipality Studies and the Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University, Sweden

Emanuel Wittberg is a PhD student with a master’s degree in economics. He is enrolled at the PhD program at the Institute of Analytical Sociology, Linköping University. His main research interests include methodology issues, corruption, abuse of power, and conditions for accountability in mature welfare states.

Downloads

Published

2018-12-15

How to Cite

Erlingsson, G. Ó, & Wittberg, E. (2018). They Talk the Talk – But Do They Walk the Walk?. Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, 22(4), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v22i4.8692

Issue

Section

Original Articles

Most read articles by the same author(s)

Similar Articles

<< < 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.