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Christine Benesch, Monika Bütler, Katharina E. Hofer (2018)
Transparency in Parliamentary Voting, 163
Fang‐Yi Chiou, Lawrence S. Rothenberg (2006)
Preferences, Parties, and Legislative Productivity, 34
Sarah E. Anderson, Daniel M. Butler, Laurel Harbridge‐Yong (2020)
Rejecting Compromise: Legislators' Fear of Primary Voters
Sarah A Binder (2003)
Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock
Daniel Berliner, Benjamin E. Bagozzi, Brian Palmer‐Rubin, Aaron Erlich (2019)
The Political Logic of Government Disclosure: Evidence from Information Requests in Mexico
Daniel Berliner (2014)
The Political Origins of Transparency, 76
Louis D Brandeis (1914)
Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It
Christopher H. Achen, Larry M. Bartels (2017)
Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government
Daniel Berliner, Aaron Erlich (2015)
Competing for Transparency: Political Competition and Institutional Reform in Mexican States, 109
Matt Blackwell, James Honaker, Gary King (2017)
A Unified Approach to Measurement Error and Missing Data: Overview and Applications, 46
James E. Alt, David Dreyer Lassen, Shanna Rose (2006)
The Causes of Fiscal Transparency: Evidence from the U.S. States, 53
William D. Berry, Evan Ringquist, Richard C. Fording, Russell L. Hanson (1998)
Measuring Citizen and Government Ideology in the American States, 1960–93, 41
Daniel C. Bowen, Zachary Greene (2014)
Should We Measure Professionalism with an Index? A Note on Theory and Practice in State Legislative Professionalism Research, 14
Governments around the world face an apparent tension when considering whether to allow public access to the governing process. In principle, transparent institutions promote accountability and good governance. However, politicians and scholars contend that such reforms also constrain politicians' capacity to negotiate and compromise, producing inefficiency and gridlock. This argument—that transparency inhibits compromise—is widely accepted, but rarely empirically tested. We develop a theoretical framework around the claim and evaluate it in the context of American state legislatures. We leverage temporal variation in state “sunshine law” adoptions and legislative exemptions to identify the effects of transparency on several observable indicators of compromise: legislative productivity, polarization, partisanship, policy change, and budget delay. Our analyses generally do not support the argument; we mostly report precisely estimated negligible effects. Thus, transparency may not be the hindrance to policy making that conventional wisdom suggests. Effective governance appears possible in state legislatures even under public scrutiny.
American Journal of Political Science – Wiley
Published: Apr 1, 2021
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