Freedom of Information and the Developing World

Policy Evaluation via Composite Indexes: Qualitative Lessons from International Transparency Policy Indexes

“…The result may be that countries adopt laws to please international interests, but cannot or do not put them into practice (Darch, 2013b;Darch & Underwood, 2010;Roberts, 2006pp. 20, 111).…”

The Information-Gathering Matrix: A Framework for Conceptualizing the Use of Freedom of Information Laws

“…Given the identities of FOI scholars and advocates, it is not difficult to see why a "political" narrative has tended to drown out other interpretations of FOI use. The fields of scholarship outlined above are to varying extents "politicized" and have consequently tended to focus on "barriers to accessing public information" and the politics of information (Berliner, 2014;Coronel, 2001;Costa, 2013;Darch & Underwood, 2010;Florini, 2000;Kasuya, 2012;Lindberg, 2006;Michener, 2011Michener, , 2014aRoberts, 2006;Snell, 2001;Worthy, 2010Worthy, , 2013). Keane's recent work on "monitory democracy" (Keane, 2010) is representative of the thread that unites mainstream scholarship on FOI: a struggle to monitor the government and ensure "public accountability," in other words, FOI as a public and political tool.…”

“…One line of thinking is that transparency policies in general and FOI laws in particular “are not formally neutral, but create positions of relative advantage and disadvantage” (Terrill, 2000, p. 31). In some countries, the very idea of inquiring about or questioning the government policy—especially in collaborative efforts—is often construed as an act of opposition or “enmity” (Darch & Underwood, 2010, p. 209). The approach of public servants toward FOI depends upon differing legal and institutional traditions (Meijer, 2013).…”

Comparing Resistance to Open Data Performance Measurement: Public Education in Brazil and the Uk

“…There may be good reason for this: in the multi‐stakeholder universe of open data policies, principals are often agents and agents principals. Incentive structures are less easily discerned than within the literature on resistance to transparency and freedom of information, where the universe is typically divided into advocates and resisters (Roberts ; Darch and Underwood ; Hood ; Berliner ; Michener ). What types of policy‐specific resistance are challenging open data initiatives and how serious are they?…”