Do freedom of information laws increase transparency of government? A replication of a field experiment
Open accessAbstract
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.
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FOI laws have been enacted in many countries and have been found to increase government transparency in several countries.
“FOI Acts have been enacted across the globe and have been found to effectively increase government transparency in several countries (e.g.Worthy, John, & Vannoni, 2017;Spac, Voda and Zagrapan 2018;Grimmelikhuijsen, John, Meijer, & Worthy, 2019).”
From Latent transparency and trust in government: Unexpected findings from two survey experiments (2020) · cites this paper as Grimmelikhuijsen, John, Meijer, & Worthy, 2019
FOIA requests have been shown to have a significant positive effect on government transparency.
“Also various studies have shown that FOIA requests have a significant positive effect on government transparency (e.g.Worthy et al., 2017;Spáč et al. 2018;Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2019).”
From Latent transparency and trust in government: Unexpected findings from two survey experiments (2020) · cites this paper as Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2019
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- Authors
- Grimmelikhuijsen, S., John, P., Meijer, A., & Worthy, B.
- Affiliations
- Utrecht University (NL)
- King's College London (GB)
- Birkbeck, University of London (GB)
- Venue
- Journal of Behavioral Public Administration
- Published
- 2019-01-01
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2576-6465 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2889135876
- Cited by
- 52
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 2
- FWCI
- 17.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Behavioral Public Administration (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- BIROn (Birkbeck, University of London) (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Administrative Law and Governance
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › E-Government and Public Services
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
- Keywords
- access to information law, government transparency, replication study, field experiments, information requests, local government, proactive disclosure, concordance
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