Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:12:54.372Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Measuring Transparency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

James R. Hollyer ,
B. Peter Rosendorff  and
James Raymond Vreeland
James R. Hollyer*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, 1414 Social Sciences, 267 19th Ave. S, Minneapolis, MN 55455
B. Peter Rosendorff
Affiliation:
Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University. e-mail: [email protected]
James Raymond Vreeland
Affiliation:
Mortara Center for International Studies, Georgetown University. e-mail: [email protected]
*
e-mail: [email protected] (corresponding author)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Transparency is often viewed as crucial to government accountability, but its measurement remains elusive. This concept encompasses many dimensions, which have distinct effects. In this article, we focus on a specific dimension of transparency: governments' collection and dissemination of aggregate data. We construct a measure of this aspect of transparency, using an item response model that treats transparency as a latent predictor of the reporting of data to the World Bank's World Development Indicators. The resultant index covers 125 countries from 1980 to 2010. Unlike some alternatives (e.g., Freedom House), our measure—the HRV index—is based on objective criteria rather than subjective expert judgments. Unlike newspaper circulation numbers, HRV reflects the dissemination of credible content—in that it has survived the World Bank's quality control assessment. In a validation exercise, we find that our measure outperforms newspaper circulation as a predictor of Law and Order and Bureaucratic Quality as measured by the ICRG, particularly in autocracies. It performs as well as newspaper circulation in predicting corruption. These findings suggest that data dissemination is a distinct, and politically relevant, form of transparency.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , Autumn 2014 , pp. 413 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Authors' note: We would like to thank Neal Beck, Adam Bonica, Lawrence Broz, Christina Davis, Jennifer Gandhi, Michael Gilligan, Andrew Little, Jonathan Nagler, Megumi Naoi, William Skorupski, Randall Stone, Johannes Urpelainen, and participants in the 2011 MPSA Panel on New Methodologies and Data for IPE, the NYU Workshop on Bayesian Methods, the 2012 ISA Panel on Transparency, Information and Firms in a Global Economy, and the Stanford University Methods Workshop for helpful comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute for access to their resources. All remaining errors are our own. Replication materials for this article are available on the Dataverse site for this article, http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24274. We will also upload all replication files, our index, and related work to http://HRVtransparency.org. Supplementary materials for this article are available on the Political Analysis Web site.

References

Adserà, Alícia, Boix, Carles, and Payne, Mark. 2003. Are you being served? Political accountability and quality of government. Journal of Law, Economics & Organization 19(2): 445–90.Google Scholar
Barro, Robert J. 1973. The control of politicians: An economic model. Public Choice 14(1): 19–42.Google Scholar
Berliner, Daniel. 2011. The political origins of transparency.Google Scholar
Besley, Timothy. 2006. Principled agents? The political economy of good government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Besley, Timothy, and Burgess, Robin. 2002. The political economy of government responsiveness: Theory and evidence from India. Quarterly Journal of Economics 117(4): 1415–51.Google Scholar
Björkman, Martina, and Svensson, Jakob. 2009. Power to the people: Evidence from a randomized field experiment on community-based monitoring in Uganda. Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(2): 735–69.Google Scholar
Brambor, Thomas, Clark, William Roberts, and Golder, Matt. 2005. Understanding interaction models: Improving empirical analyses. Political Analysis 13: 1–20.Google Scholar
Broz, J. Lawrence. 2002. Political system transparency and monetary commitment regimes. International Organization 56(4): 861–87.Google Scholar
Brunetti, Aymo, and Weder, Beatrice. 2003. A free press is bad news for corruption. Journal of Public Economics 87: 1801–24.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, Smith, Alastair, Siverson, Randolph M., and Morrow, James D. 2003. The logic of political survival. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Carmines, Edward G., and Zeller, Richard A. 1979. Reliability and validity assessment. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheibub, José Antonio, Gandhi, Jennifer, and Vreeland, James Raymond. 2010. Democracy and dictatorship revisited. Public Choice 143: 67–101.Google Scholar
Chong, Alberto, Ana L De La, O., Karlan, Dean, and Wantchekon, Leonard. 2010. Information dissemination and local governments' electoral returns: Evidence from a field experiment in Mexico.Google Scholar
Di Tella, Rafael, and Schargrodsky, Ernesto. 2003. The role of wages and auditing during a crackdown on corruption in the city of Buenos Aires. Journal of Law, Economics & Organization 46: 269–92.Google Scholar
Duch, Raymond M., and Stevenson, Randolph T. 2008. The economic vote: How political and economic institutions condition election results. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D., and Laitin, David. 2003. Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war. American Political Science Review 97(1): 75–90.Google Scholar
Ferejohn, John. 1986. Incumbent performance and electoral control. Public Choice 50: 5–25.Google Scholar
Ferraz, Claudio, and Finan, Frederico. 2008. Exposing corrupt politicians: The effects of Brazil's publically released audits on electoral outcomes. Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(2): 703–45.Google Scholar
Fforde, Adam, and De Vylder, Stefan. 1996. From plan to market: The economic transition in Vietnam. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Fox, Jean-Paul, and Glas, Cees A. W. 2003. Bayesian modeling of measurement error in predictor variables using item response theory. Psychometrika 68(2): 169–91.Google Scholar
Gates, Scott, Hegre, Havard, Jones, Mark P., and Strand, Havard. 2006. Institutional inconsistency and political instability: Polity duration, 1800–2000. American Journal of Political Science 50(4): 893–908.Google Scholar
Gehlbach, Scott, and Malesky, Edmund. 2010. The contribution of veto players to economic reform. Journal of Politics 74(4): 957–75.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and Hill, Jennifer. 2006. Data analysis using regression and multilevel/hierarchical models: Analytical methods in social science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, Goegebeur, Yuri, Tuerlinckx, Francis, and Van Mechelen, Iven. 2000. Diagnostic checks for discrete data regression models using posterior predictive simulations. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics) 49(2): 247–68.Google Scholar
Gill, Jeff. 2008. Is partial-dimension convergence a problem for inference from MCMC algorithms? Political Analysis 16(2): 153–78.Google Scholar
Herron, Michael C. 1999. Postestimation uncertainty in limited dependent variable models. Political Analysis 8(1): 83–98.Google Scholar
Heston, Alan, Summers, Robert, and Aten, Bettina. 2012. Penn World Table Version 7.1. Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Barak D. 2011. The politics of transparency in Kenya and Tanzania. Manuscript. Department of Government, Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Hollyer, James R., Peter Rosendorff, B., and Vreeland, James R. 2011. Democracy and transparency. Journal of Politics 73(4): 1–15.Google Scholar
Hollyer, James R., Peter Rosendorff, B., and Vreeland, James R. 2013a. Data disclosure, accountability and the facets of transparency.Google Scholar
Hollyer, James R., Peter Rosendorff, B., and Vreeland, James R. 2013b. Transparency, protest and political (in)stability.Google Scholar
Hollyer, James R., Peter Rosendorff, B., and Vreeland, James R. 2014. Replication data for: Measuring transparency. http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24274UNF:5:Mj2tZ0rivXJPhuFqdQS0JA==IQSS Dataverse Network [Distributor] V1 [Version].Google Scholar
Islam, Roumeen. 2006. Does more transparency go along with better governance? Economics and Politics 18(2): 121–67.Google Scholar
Jackman, Simon. 2009. Bayesian analysis for the social sciences. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.Google Scholar
Kiondo, Andrew. 1992. Tanzania and the IMF: The dynamics of liberalization. In The Nature of Economic Reforms in Tanzania, 21–42. Hoboken, NJ: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Knorr-Held, Leonhard. 1999. Conditional prior proposals in dynamic models. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 26(1): 129–44.Google Scholar
Lebovic, James H. 2006. Democracies and transparency: Country reports to the UN Register of Conventional Arms, 1992–2001. Journal of Peace Research 43(5): 543–62.Google Scholar
Malesky, Edmund. 2008. Straight ahead on red: How foreign direct investment empowers subnational leaders. Journal of Politics 70(1): 97–119.Google Scholar
Malesky, Edmund. 2009. Gerrymandering Vietnam style: Escaping the partial reform equilibrium in a non-democratic regime. Journal of Politics 71(1): 132–59.Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew D., and Quinn, Kevin M. 2002. Dynamic ideal point estimation via Markov chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999. Political Analysis 10: 134–153.Google Scholar
Mmuya, Max, and Chaligha, Amon. 1992. Towards multiparty politics in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam University Press.Google Scholar
Mmuya, Max, and Chaligha, Amon. 1994. Political parties and democracy in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam University Press.Google Scholar
Prunier, Gérard. 1996. Somalia: Civil war, intervention, and withdrawal. Refugee Survey Quarterly 15(1): 35–85.Google Scholar
Reinikka, Ritva, and Svensson, Jakob. 2003. The power of information: Evidence from a newspaper campaign to reduce capture. Working paper, Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University.Google Scholar
Riedel, James, and Turley, William S. 1999. The politics and economics of transition to an open market economy in Viet Nam. OECD Development Centre Working Papers 152.Google Scholar
Rodrik, Dani. 1995. Why is there international lending? NBER Working Paper.Google Scholar
Rosendorff, B. Peter, and Vreeland, James Raymond. 2006. Democracy and data dissemination: The effect of political regime on transparency.Google Scholar
Stone, Randall W. 2008. The scope of IMF conditionality. International Organization 62(4): 589–620.Google Scholar
Treisman, Daniel. 2004. Stabilization tactics in Latin America: Menem, Cardoso, and the politics of low inflation. Comparative Politics 36(4): 399–419.Google Scholar
Vreeland, James Raymond. 2003. The IMF and economic development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Andrew. 2009. On the release of information by governments: Causes and consequences. Journal of Development Economics 89: 124–38.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Hollyer et al. supplementary material

Appendix

Download Hollyer et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 4.6 MB