The political origins of transparency reform: insights from the Italian case

Abstract

This research contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of government transparency. It uncovers the dynamics of transparency in the Italian case, which shows an interesting reform trajectory: until the late 1980s no transparency provisions existed; since then, provisions have dramatically increased under the impulse of changing patterns of political competition. The analysis of the Italian case highlights that electoral uncertainty for incumbents is a double-edged sword for institutional reform: on the one hand, it incentivizes the adoption of ever-growing transparency provisions; on the other, it jeopardizes the implementation capacity of public agencies by leading to severe administrative burdens.

Do Economic Recovery Packages Open a Window of Opportunity for Corruption and Mismanagement? The Case of Italy in the Aftermath of the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…By unpacking accountability into the dimensions of transparency and enforcement, the empirical analysis revealed that safeguards for accountability have mostly focused on transparency. This finding is consistent with the path that Italy followed before the pandemic, when the anticorruption framework focused on proactive disclosure of government information as the major tool for the prevention of corruption (Di Mascio et al, 2019 ). Furthermore, findings revealed that safeguards for accountability have not been commensurate with risks of corruption and mismanagement because recovery measures targeting businesses have not displayed a higher level of accountability if compared with measures targeting people.…”

“…It supervises the adoption of entity-specific anticorruption plans by public administrations, with a focus on the mitigation of corruption and mismanagement risks. It also provides support to public administrations in the implementation of provisions that mandated the proactive online disclosure of government information (Di Mascio et al, 2019 ). Over the years, the Italian National Anticorruption Authority has emerged as a political actor in its own right, acting as an institutional advocate that exploited recurring corruption scandals to call for more ambitious measures sustaining the implementation of accountability mechanisms (Di Mascio et al, 2020a ).…”

Response, Awareness and Requester Identity in Foi Law: Evidence from a Field Experiment

“…Firstly, it augments the scholarly discourse by presenting experimental findings that scrutinize the responsiveness of public bureaus to citizens' FOI requests within the context of Italya country whose performance in implementing FOI remains unexplored. Italy serves as a pivotal case study because of its status of late adopter of FOI and its historical inclination towards reluctance in embracing disclosure commitments (Di Mascio et al, 2019). Secondly, this research distinguishes itself by engaging with the Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) within the domain of public administration (Williamson, 1997) to formulate hypotheses pertaining to the emergence of bureaucratic discretionary bias in the handling of FOI access requests.…”

Attitudes towards lockdown, trust in institutions, and civic engagement: A study on Sicilians during the coronavirus lockdown

“…To prevent corruption, facilitate citizens' participation in public decisions, and consolidate the legitimacy of the authorities, legislative measures have been enacted to achieve administrative transparency (Holzner & Holzner, 2006). Overall, the results are positive (Galli et al, 2017), even if the process is partly held back by bureaucracy (Di Mascio et al, 2019), regulatory incompleteness (Nugnes, 2019), and some resistance. A recent study, for example, conducted within the national health system, finds that only a minority of the involved bodies have disclosed social reporting reports useful for understanding their contribution to SDG3 (Sustainable Development Goals 3, United Nation, 2015) in a transparent way and that public managers are less likely to adopt non‐financial reporting tools than private ones (Pizzi et al, 2020).…”