To know is to act? Revisiting the impact of government transparency on corruption
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| Author | Sabina Schnell |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.2029 |
Received: 19 August 2022
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Revised: 1 September 2023
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Accepted: 7 September 2023
DOI: 10.1002/pad.2029
REVIEW ARTICLE
To know is to act? Revisiting the impact of government
transparency on corruption
Sabina Schnell
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public
Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New
York, USA
Correspondence
Sabina Schnell.
Email: dsschnel@syr.edu
Abstract
Transparency is expected to reduce corruption by enabling the public to uncover it
and thus hold officials accountable. This assumes citizens care about corruption and
have mechanisms for enacting accountability. Yet, paradoxically, transparency has
been prescribed as a cure against corruption precisely in contexts where such
mechanisms are weak. This article integrates research from different disciplines to
better understand when and how transparency reduces corruption. It finds that
citizens do react to information about corruption even in countries with weak in-
stitutions and wide‐spread corruption, especially if the information is widely shared,
corruption is a salient issue, and there are some expectations of sanctions for
malfeasance. Furthermore, even partial compliance with transparency policies can
make a difference. More research should explore when and why bureaucrats comply
with accountability pressures from above and below, how expectations about
sanctions are formed and lead to ‘indignation rather than resignation,’ as well what
the systemic effects of transparency policies are and how they evolve over time.
KEYWORDS
access to information, accountability, corruption, disclosure, transparency
1
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INTRODUCTION
The close link between transparency and corruption is illustrated by
the name of the most famous anti‐corruption NGO: ‘Transparency
International.’ A review of 25 years of transparency research found a
consistent association between the two (Cucciniello et al., 2017),
which was confirmed by a recent meta‐analysis (Chen & Gana-
pati, 2021). However, we know relatively little about how and when
transparency can help reduce corruption in different contexts
(Chen & Ganapati, 2021). Like much public administration research,
transparency research also has focussed mostly on high‐income,
institutionalized democracies in North America and Western Europe
(Beagles et al., 2019; Bertelli et al., 2020; Gulrajani & Moloney, 2012).
This is perhaps one reason why, even though transparency has been
discussed extensively in connection with integrity and public values
more generally (Paanakker et al., 2020), its role in reducing public
sector corruption has received comparatively less attention. Indeed,
in rich institutionalized democracies, reducing administrative cor-
ruption is conceptualized mostly as a politico‐administrative chal-
lenge of congressional or parliamentary oversight, internal control
mechanisms, and rule compliance within the administration (Anec-
hiarico & Jacobs, 1994) rather than as a citizen/public oversight
challenge.
This article thus answers calls for “investigating the ways in
which contextual conditions shape transparency outcomes” and
“investigating transparency in neglected countries” (Cucciniello
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, pro-
vided the original work is properly cited.
© 2023 The Authors. Public Administration and Development published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Public Admin Dev. 2023;43:355–367. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pad
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