Which Countries Have More Open Governments? Assessing Structural Determinants of Openness

• Author: Suyeon Jo,Sabina Schnell
• DOI: 10.1177/0275074019854445
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Date: 01 November 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074019854445

American Review of Public Administration

2019, Vol. 49(8) 944 –956

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074019854445

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Article

On his first day in office in 2009, President Obama issued the

Open Government Directive, which encouraged public agen-

cies to be more transparent, participatory, and collaborative

(McDermott, 2010). In 2011, he launched the Open

Government Partnership (OGP) at the U.N. General

Assembly, together with six other heads of state. The OGP is

a global multi-stakeholder partnership that aims to “secure

concrete commitments from governments to promote trans-

parency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness

new technologies to strengthen governance” (Elgin-Cossart,

Sutton, & Sachs, 2016, p. 2). Today, 70 governments are

active OGP members, and they are joined by myriad non-

governmental and international organizations that want to

advance government openness around the world. Even out-

side of the OGP initiative, more and more national and local

governments are adopting various open government (OG)

measures, from open data portals to using online tools to

consult and involve citizens and policy-makers (Wirtz &

Birkmeyer, 2015).

As it increased in popularity, OG has been touted not just

as a way of improving government performance and citizen

participation but also as a new form of or paradigm for gov-

ernance (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and

Development [OECD], 2016). While scholars have identi-

fied some determinants of overall institutional quality in a

country (e.g., Islam & Montenegro, 2002; Serra, 2011), rela-

tively little is known about the contexts in which OG specifi-

cally is likely to flourish. Public administration research on

OG has examined its conceptual dimensions (Meijer, Curtin,

& Hillebrandt, 2012), the organizational drivers of OG at the

local level in the US (Grimmelikhuijsen & Feeney, 2016),

and US OG policy (McDermott, 2010; Piotrowski, 2017).

However, few have asked why some national governments

are more open than others. Understanding which country-

level, macro-structural factors, and “large forces” shape gov-

ernment openness is, however, critical to the pursuit of OG

efforts (Roberts, 2015). It can help advocates, practitioners,

and researchers understand the contexts in which OG reforms

are more likely to take hold and be successful, as well as how

to improve the overall preconditions for government open-

ness in a country.

Hence, the overall research question for this article is

which political, administrative, and civic factors are associ-

ated with more OGs around the world. Part of the challenge

in assessing cross-national correlates of OG is the lack of an

established measure of openness that is comparable across

countries. To date, public administration research about the

drivers of OG primarily has focused on measures of website

openness (e.g., Grimmelikhuijsen & Feeney, 2016; Welch &

854445ARPXXX10.1177/0275074019854445The American Review of Public AdministrationSchnell and Jo

research-article2019

1Syracuse University, NY, USA

2The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sabina Schnell, Maxwell School of Citizenship and International Affairs,

Syracuse University, 400C Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA.

Email: dsschnel@syr.edu

Which Countries Have More Open

Governments? Assessing Structural

Determinants of Openness

Sabina Schnell1 and Suyeon Jo2

Abstract

An increasing number of countries are adopting open government reforms, driven, in part, by the Open Government

Partnership (OGP), a global effort dedicated to advancing such initiatives. Yet, there is still wide variation in openness across

countries. We investigate the political, administrative, and civic factors that explain this variation, using countries’ fulfillment

of OGP eligibility criteria as a proxy for minimum standards of openness. We find that countries with strong constraints on

the executive and high levels of citizen education have governments that are more open. A dense network of civil society

organizations is associated with more budget transparency and higher civil liberties, but not with access to information or

asset disclosure laws. The results suggest that if the value of openness is to be translated in practice, it is not enough to have

capable bureaucracies—countries also need informed citizens and strong oversight of executive agencies.

Keywords

open government, transparency, access to information, global initiatives