Measuring local government transparency

Despite the importance of government transparency to promote accountability and prevent maladministration, empirical research has failed to produce proper tools to assess and compare government transparency practices. Most contributions to the topic do not address it from a stakeholder’s perspective...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cruz, Nuno Ferreira da (author)
Other Authors: Tavares, António F. (author), Marques, Rui Cunha (author), Jorge, Susana (author), Sousa, Luís de (author)
Format: article
Language:eng
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1822/54383
Country:Portugal
Oai:oai:repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt:1822/54383
Description
Summary:Despite the importance of government transparency to promote accountability and prevent maladministration, empirical research has failed to produce proper tools to assess and compare government transparency practices. Most contributions to the topic do not address it from a stakeholder’s perspective, particularly in selecting the indicators to include in transparency indexes. This paper contributes to the debate by developing a municipal transparency index based on information available on local government official websites. The methodological approach borrows insights from the decision analysis literature to structure the index through a participatory process. An application to the Portuguese local government setting is briefly discussed.