The Real Impact of Open Government: Empirical Evidence from the OGP

• In Event: Innovations and Theories for Public Engagement

Abstract

The rise of open government policies is an incipient global phenomenon. One way for policymakers to commit to these policies is by joining international open government or transparency standards. Maintaining membership requires undertaking internal reforms in several policy dimensions, especially regarding transparency, open data, but also accountability mechanisms based in information and communication technologies (ICT). Using a novel dataset based on national and subnational membership in the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the leading global open government standard, I quantitatively analyze what factors might lead governments to join these standards through a penalized logistic regression of OGP membership on a host of governance and socioeconomic variables. In addition to this, I also test the impacts of membership after joining by applying Callaway and Sant'Anna's difference-in-differences method. This paper can be inscribed in the literature on open government, open data, transparency, accountability, ICT for development, e-government and international or global civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental actors.

Author

• Alejandro Baron, Johns Hopkins University (SAIS)