Transparency of local public decision-making: towards trust or demystification of government. Paper

Abstract

Online available minutes of the local council offer the opportunity to look behind the scenes of local government decision-making. But will this transparency, as promised, lead to higher levels of trust or will people get disenchanted by the incrementalism and ‘muddling through’ of the council? 156 people participated in an experiment to examine this question. These participants were randomly assigned to three groups and were given varying amounts of information about council minutes on a municipal website. The minutes were concerned with public decisionmaking about a policy plan to combat air pollution. Results indicate that people who used transparency, are significantly more negative regarding perceived competence of the council. Comparing a low and a high level of transparency shows that when people use transparency, the relationship is mediated by the credibility of the information. Also, knowledge about the decision-making process appears to cause a shift in judgment criteria. People with much knowledge are inclined to base their judgment of perceived competence on this knowledge and less on information credibility. Giving information about the decision-making process is seen as a condition sine qua non with regard to perceived honesty as this remains unaffected. Hence, people expect the local council to be transparent, but in the end there seems to be a gap between public expectations of rational decision-making whilst the reality that transparency discloses is much more chaotic and reveals public decision-making as ‘muddling through’.