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Traditionally, policy transfer within Europe has taken place in the form of bilateral voluntary transfer within ‘families of nations’. The creation of binding international regimes, in particular the adoption of binding EU policies, has increased instances of multilaterally obligated transfer in Europe. However, very little research has been carried out on the interaction between these two types of transfers. This paper starts from the assumption that a binding EU policy of ambiguous nature and/or with a limited scope of application creates policy space for additional voluntary transfers in member states. Evidence on the implementation of the 1990 Access to Environmental Information Directive in Portugal and Ireland is used to illustrate that three different modes of combining voluntary and obligated transfers may be used. There is, however, no ideal solution since the three modes (hybridization, fragmentation and sub‐regimes) create different types of costs and benefits.

Critics of the notion or concept of “information society” have often made claims to put the new ICTs into a more historical and institutional context. As a response, in this chapter, the more than 200-year-old right of access to governmental information is selected as a reference point. A comprehensive review of literature reveals that this right can be analyzed from various perspectives. Examples are the politics, policy, and polity perspective; the market perspective; and the citizenship perspective. Each perspective highlights different aspects of the impacts a right of access to information can possibly have. The citizenship perspective turns out to be particularly interesting, because the traditional, but changeable concept of citizenship, and the right of access to information interact with each other. In a second step, the same perspectives can be utilized for an analysis of documents and literature on new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in order to determine whether truly new and original elements are added to what has previously been analyzed in terms of access to information rights. The application of the freedom of information perspectives to Internet-based access to information allows for the identification of interesting research questions on the changing concept of citizenship, the future of national and transnational governance and the future of regulation.

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