Policy Area as a Potential Moderator of Transparency Effects: An Experiment

• Date: 01 May 2014
• Author: Jenny de Fine Licht
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12194

Jenny de Fine Licht is a doctoral stu-

dent in the Department of Political Science

and the Quality of Government Institute at

the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

E-mail: jenny.def‌i nelicht@pol.gu.se

Policy Area as a Potential Moderator of Transparency Effects: An Experiment 361

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 3, pp. 361–371. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12194.

Jenny de Fine Licht

University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Building on the counterintuitive f‌i ndings of recent

empirical studies that transparency in political decision

making may have a negative ef‌f ect on public legitimacy

beliefs, this article suggests that transparency has dif‌f erent

ef‌f ects depending on the policy area. Specif‌i cally, it argues

that transparency is less ef‌f ective in policy decisions that

involve trade-of‌f s related to questions of human life and

death or well-being. Using an experiment that involved

1,032 participants, the ef‌f ect of transparency is tested in

two policy areas that represent routine priority setting

(culture and leisure) and policy decisions implicitly

related to human life and well-being (traf‌f‌i c security).

Results indicate that transparency can increase public

acceptance of political decisions, but this ef‌f ect is moder-

ated by the type of policy area. Furthermore, a limited

type of transparency in which

decision makers provide justi-

f‌i cations for their decisions can

result in benef‌i ts while avoiding

potential costs.

The hypothesis—or

even assumption—of

a positive relationship between increased

transparency in political decision making and public

legitimacy and trust has a long history in political

philosophy (e.g., Hood 2006). As transparency has

gained a reputation as a key to good governance

(e.g., Heald 2006), and legitimacy and trustworthi-

ness are seen as fundamental to citizen compliance

and support (e.g., Kim 2005; Levi, Sacks, and Tyler

2009), it is not surprising that the concepts are

frequently connected in theory and political rhetoric.

However, the empirical support for this relation-

ship is not only scant but also contradictory (see,

e.g., Grimmelikhuijsen 2012 for a discussion), with

several studies showing null or even negative ef‌f ects

(e.g., Bauhr and Grimes 2014; de Fine Licht 2011;

Grimmelikhuijsen 2010, 2012; Worthy 2010).

 e question of why transparency does not seem to

be the obvious prescription against declining public

trust and legitimacy that democratic theories suggest

has recently received increasing scholarly interest.

For example, empirical studies have shown that the

initial level of trust and knowledge af‌f ects how people

experience transparency (Grimmelikhuijsen and

Meijer 2014), that people from dif‌f erent cultures tend

to react dif‌f erently to transparency (Grimmelikhuijsen

et al. 2013), and that there is a translation problem

between actual decision-making procedures and

public perceptions of procedures that makes transpar-

ency less ef‌f‌i cient in improving the public’s legitimacy

beliefs (de Fine Licht 2013).

In line with ef‌f orts to increase our understanding of

transparency ef‌f ects, this article makes a f‌i rst test of

whether transparency has dif‌f erent ef‌f ects in dif‌f erent

policy areas. Inspired by the the-

ory of taboo trade-of‌f s—which

argues that trade-of‌f s between

sacred values, such as human

life, and secular values, such as

money, are particularly dif-

f‌i cult for people to accept—the

article suggests that one reason

why transparency fails in empirical tests is that studies

have tended to focus on policy areas related to human

well-being, such as health care and air quality manage-

ment. Building on data from an original experiment

with 1,032 participants, this study examines the ef‌f ect

of increased transparency on public perceptions of

legitimacy in two policy areas: one that involves politi-

cal choices related to human life and well-being (pub-

lic spending on traf‌f‌i c security) and one that involves

routine decisions (public spending on culture and

leisure). In each policy area, three degrees of transpar-

ency are manipulated.

 e article’s contributions are both theoretical and

practical. Its theoretical contribution lies in enhanced

understanding of how transparency ef‌f ects might be

conditional, which casts light on the diverging results

in recent empirical studies.  e practical contribution

lies in providing further insights into how transpar-

ency reforms can af‌f ect public acceptance and trust.

Policy Area as a Potential Moderator of Transparency Ef‌f ects:

An Experiment

 is article makes a f‌i rst test

of whether transparency has

dif‌f erent ef‌f ects in dif‌f erent

policy areas.