Open AccessDo freedom of information laws increase transparency of government? A replication of a field experiment
Author(s) -
Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen,
Peter John,
Albert Meijer,
Ben Worthy
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of behavioral public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2576-6465
DOI - 10.30636/jbpa.12.34
Subject(s) - freedom of information , transparency (behavior) , democracy , government (linguistics) , replication (statistics) , political science , law , freedom of the press , law and economics , public administration , economics , politics , mathematics , philosophy , linguistics , statistics
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.