IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v109y2015i01p110-128_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competing for Transparency: Political Competition and Institutional Reform in Mexican States

Author

Listed:
  • BERLINER, DANIEL
  • ERLICH, AARON

Abstract

Why do political actors undertake reforms that constrain their own discretion? We argue that uncertainty generated by political competition is a major driver of such reforms, and test this argument using subnational data on Mexican states’ adoption of state-level access to information (ATI) laws. Examining data from 31 Mexican states plus the Federal District, we find that more politically competitive states passed ATI laws more rapidly, even taking into account the party in power, levels of corruption, civil society, and other factors. The fine-grained nature of our data, reflecting the staggered timing of elections, inauguration dates, and dates of passage, allows us to distinguish between different theoretical mechanisms. We find the greatest evidence in favor of an insurance mechanism, by which incumbent parties who face uncertainty over future political control seek to ensure access to government information, and means of monitoring incumbents, in the future in case they lose power.

Suggested Citation

  • Berliner, Daniel & Erlich, Aaron, 2015. "Competing for Transparency: Political Competition and Institutional Reform in Mexican States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 109(1), pages 110-128, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:109:y:2015:i:01:p:110-128_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055414000616/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Berliner, 2016. "Transnational advocacy and domestic law: International NGOs and the design of freedom of information laws," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 121-144, March.
    2. Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati & Arusha Cooray & Samuel Brazys, 2018. "Nothing to hide: Commitment to, compliance with, and impact of the special data dissemination standard," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 55-77, March.
    3. Berliner, Daniel & Bagozzi, Benjamin E. & Palmer-Rubin, Brian, 2018. "What information do citizens want? Evidence from one million information requests in Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 222-235.
    4. Haizhen Mou & Maritza Lozano Man Hing, 2021. "Stringency of balanced budget laws and transparency of budgeting process," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 45-64, June.
    5. Jean Beuve & Marian W. Moszoro & Stéphane Saussier, 2019. "Political contestability and public contract rigidity: An analysis of procurement contracts," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 316-335, April.
    6. Andrew Delios & Edmund J. Malesky & Shu Yu & Griffin Riddler, 2024. "Methodological errors in corruption research: Recommendations for future research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 55(2), pages 235-251, March.
    7. Nicholas R. Jenkins & Michelangelo Landgrave & Gabriel E. Martinez, 2020. "Do political donors have greater access to government officials? Evidence from a FOIA field experiment with US municipalities," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 3(2).
    8. Changwony, Frederick Kibon & Paterson, Audrey S., 2019. "Accounting practice, fiscal decentralization and corruption," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(5).
    9. Seunghwan Myeong & Michael J. Ahn & Younhee Kim & Shengli Chu & Woojong Suh, 2021. "Government Data Performance: The Roles of Technology, Government Capacity, and Globalization through the Effects of National Innovativeness," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-14, November.
    10. Jean Beuve & Marian W Moszoro & Pablo T Spiller, 2023. "Doing It by the Book: Political Contestability and Public Contract Renegotiations," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 39(1), pages 281-308.
    11. Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati & Arusha Cooray, 2015. "Do transparency initiatives work? Assessing the impact of the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) on data transparency," CAMA Working Papers 2015-24, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    12. Eliška Drápalová & Fabrizio Di Mascio, 2020. "Islands of Good Government: Explaining Successful Corruption Control in Two Spanish Cities," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(2), pages 128-139.
    13. Žuffová, Mária, 2024. "Applying Text-as-data Methods to Information Requests: A Novel Approach to Study Different Political Phenomena," OSF Preprints 8p5e6, Center for Open Science.
    14. Branko Stanic, 2018. "Determinants of subnational budget/fiscal transparency: a review of empirical evidence," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 42(4), pages 449-486.
    15. Kleine, Mareike, 2024. "Negotiating with your mouth full: intergovernmental negotiations between transparency and confidentiality," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 124152, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Relly, Jeannine E. & Rabbi, Md. Fazle & Sabharwal, Meghna & Pakanati, Rajdeep & Schwalbe, Ethan H., 2020. "More than a decade in the making: A study of the implementation of India's Right to Information Act," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:109:y:2015:i:01:p:110-128_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.