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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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autor principal: Cruz, Nuno Ferreira da (author)
Outros Autores: Tavares, António F. (author), Marques, Rui Cunha (author), Jorge, Susana (author), Sousa, Luís de (author)
Formato: article
Idioma:eng
Publicado em: 2016
Assuntos:
Texto completo:http://hdl.handle.net/1822/54383
País:Portugal
Oai:oai:repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt:1822/54383
Descrição
Resumo: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.