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Policy & Internet
www.policyandinternet.org
Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 2 (2010)
Transparency of Public
Decision-Making: Towards Trust
in Local Government?
Stephan G. Grimmelikhuijsen, Utrecht University
Abstract
Online minutes of local councils offer the opportunity to look behind the scenes of
local government decision-making. Will this transparency, as promised, lead to
higher levels of trust? This issue was investigated by conducting an experiment
comparing participants who did not access the available information, people who
were only allowed restricted information about the minutes, and those who were
shown the full minutes of the local council.
Results indicated that people exposed to more information were significantly more
negative regarding perceived competence of the council compared to those who did
not access the available information. Additionally, participants who received only
restricted information about the minutes thought the council was less honest
compared to those who did not read them.
The relationship between transparency and trust is influenced partly by the
perceived credibility of the message on the website. Also, knowledge about the
decision-making process appears to shift judgment criteria. People well informed
about the process are inclined to base their judgment of perceived competence on
this knowledge and less on message credibility.
A theoretical explanation for the negative effect of transparency of public decision-
making is sought in the expectations of the public versus the reality. A lower
perceived competence by those who had access to full information might be
explained by a gap between public expectations of rational decision-making and the
reality of the chaos involved in public decision-making exposed through
transparency.
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© 2010 Policy Studies Organization
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press
Author Notes: The author would particularly like to thank Albert Meijer, Mark
Bovens and Marianne van der Steeg for their valuable comments on an earlier
version of this paper. Also, a previous version was presented in the E-Government
Studygroup at the EGPA conference in September 2009. Among other useful
comments of participants, the author would especially like to thank Karl Löfgren,
Arthur Edwards, William Webster and Hein van Duivenboden for their constructive
suggestions. Additionally, the author thanks three anonymous reviewers for their
helpful comments on this paper.
Keywords: openness, websites, experiment, trust
Recommended Citation:
Grimmelikhuijsen, Stephan G. (2010) "Transparency of Public Decision-Making:
Towards Trust in Local Government?" Policy & Internet: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 2.
DOI: 10.2202/1944-2866.1024
Available at: http://www.psocommons.org/policyandinternet/vol2/iss1/art2
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DOI: 10.2202/1944-2866.1024
Introduction
The transparency of public decision-making by local councils is well
established in the Netherlands. The minutes of local council meetings are
nearly literal transcriptions of the councillors’ deliberations and decision-
making processes, and in this sense, local council minutes give a unique
behind the scenes look into local government. But what happens to trust in
government when citizens take the opportunity to really examine the minutes
of local government? Does this lead to disappointment with the actual
process of public decision-making, or does it influence citizens to trust the
local council? The effect of transparency on trust remains disputed, and
although some studies have been conducted, the amount of empirical
research on this topic remains limited (Tolbert & Mossberger, 2006). If there
is research on this relationship, causal mechanisms cannot be inferred. This
study aims to contribute empirically to the debate on the connection between
transparency and trust.
The Internet has been a global catalyst for disclosure of government
information, and information can now be disclosed at relatively low cost
without the traditional boundaries of space and time (Margetts, 2006: 197;
Curtin & Meijer, 2006; Welch et al., 2005). This leads to a central question:
Does transparency of public decision-making affect citizen trust in
government?
This is a relevant question, as municipalities are the most visited
government organizations on the Internet, and the government organization
closest to citizens (see Pina et al., 2007; Van Dijk et al., 2008). Local
councils are also seen as important government bodies in the Netherlands,
since they are the public bodies formally in charge of their respective
municipalities.1
Whether transparency of government leads to higher levels of trust is
discussed in depth throughout the literature. There is a widely shared opinion
that transparency will lead to an open culture in government that benefits us
all (Hood, 2006b). It is ultimately seen as ‘something good’ which will
eventually increase citizen trust in government (Brin, 1998; Oliver, 2004).
On the other hand, scholars argue that a greater degree of transparency
generates the possibility to (unjustly) repeatedly blame the government for
1 Article 125, section 1. The Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The
executive administration consists of a mayor and several aldermen, which is controlled
and partly directed by the local council in a municipality.
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mistakes. Bovens (2003) warns about this ‘dark side of transparency’: that
when people can see everything behind the scenes of government, they may
become disenchanted with government. According to Bovens, a fault by
government can always be construed, and if citizens, media and politicians
use transparency for their own gain with no restraints, this could result in the
‘politics of scandal.’ As a result, transparency could contribute to political
cynicism, and citizen trust in government might even decline.
The decline of trust in government has been a cause for concern in
recent years in the Netherlands and for decades in the US (Tolbert &
Mossberger, 2006; Nye, 2007). Transparency is often proposed as a panacea
for better governance in general and for combating declining trust levels in
particular (Norris, 2001: 113; Hood, 2006a: 4-5), and increasing government
transparency has been one of the major aims of reform initiated in nearly all
OECD countries (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004).
The central question explored in this paper is examined by using an
experimental design. Three groups of subjects were each presented with a
different level of transparency in information given to them about public
decision-making. The first group was given information that revealed a high
level of transparency about the decision-making process, the second group
with a low level of transparency (limited information), and the third group
with no transparency or information about the process at all. The degree of
trust in government of these three different groups was then compared.
The experimental design helps to make causal inferences about the
transparency and trust relationship. First, the mechanism through which
transparency leads to trust is tested using a research model that includes the
role of information credibility and knowledge about the local council.
Second, several hypotheses are tested to shed light on the specific
differences in trust between experimental groups.
Trust and Transparency
Three Dimensions of Perceived Trustworthiness
Trust is a multidisciplinary concept with a wide variety of definitions.
Because of this, Rousseau et al. (1998) tried to formulate an overarching
definition of trust. Confident expectations and a willingness to be vulnerable
(Mayer et al., 1995) are critical components of all definitions. Based on
these elements, Rousseau et al. define trust as ‘a psychological state
comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive
expectations of the intentions or behavior of another’ (Rousseau et al., 1998:
395). This means that trust is viewed as the perceived trustworthiness of
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another. This concept is acknowledged by many scholars to be
multidimensional (McKnight & Chervany, 2006; Rousseau et al., 1998;
Mishra, 1996; Mayer et al., 1995). In this paper, three dimensions of
perceived trustworthiness are distinguished: competence, benevolence, and
honesty.
First, many authors on trust find some form of perceived competence
to be a part of trustworthiness. Some call it ‘ability’ (Jarvenpaa et al., 1998),
‘effectiveness’ (Hetherington, 1998) or ‘expertise’ (Peters et al., 1997). Yet
the differences in meaning are small, as they all refer to some kind of
capability to act. In this paper, this refers to whether people perceive a
government organization to be capable, effective, skilful or professional in
making decisions.
Second, many scholars regard perceived benevolence to be a part of
trustworthiness. This can be viewed as an ethical dimension of
trustworthiness; it particularly focuses on the intention of government action.
Some authors call this dimension ‘care’ (Peters et al., 1997), ‘commitment’
(Levi & Stoker, 1998) or ‘concern’ Mishra (1996). For this study, this refers
to whether people think that a local council genuinely cares about the
citizens living in their municipality.
Third, many scholars identify perceived honesty or integrity of the
trustee. In this paper, perceived honesty implies that the local council is
perceived to keep commitments and tell the truth (McKnight et al., 2002;
Kim, 2005). Now that the concept of perceived ‘trustworthiness’ has been
made clear, the next section elaborates on the definition and concept of
‘transparency’.
Transparency: Watching Government from the Outside
Transparency is a nebulous concept. Definitions, if available at all, are
mostly metaphorical and very general - they talk of ‘lifting the veil of
secrecy’ (Davis, 1998) and ‘the ability to look clearly through the windows
of an institution’ (Den Boer 1998: 105). Nevertheless, nearly all definitions
of government transparency have one element in common: they refer to the
extent to which an organization reveals relevant information about its
internal workings, such as decision processes, procedures, functioning and
performance (Wong & Welch, 2004; Curtin & Meijer, 2006; Gerring &
Thacker, 2004). This includes the following:
- A component about the active disclosure of information by an
organization.
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Grimmelikhuijsen: Transparency of Local Public Decision-Making
© 2010 Policy Studies Organization
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press
- Allowing external actors to assess the organization’s internal
workings or performance.
This leads to the following definition for transparency, which will be used in
this paper:
Transparency is the active disclosure of information by an organization in
such as way as to allow the internal workings or performance of that
organization to be monitored by external actors.
This paper investigates government transparency mediated through the
Internet. Information and Communication Technologies, and the Internet in
particular, are great catalysts of disclosure of government information to the
public. Meijer (2009) denotes transparency mediated through the Internet as
‘computer-mediated transparency.’ The proposed definition in this section
refers to transparency of organizations in general, which is still rather
generic, the next section specifies dimensions that are particularly relevant to
government transparency and how this concept of government transparency
is used in this study.
Conceptualizing Government Transparency
Traditionally, scholars interested in computer-mediated government
transparency have developed measurement instruments that focus on the
technical aspects of government websites. Most prominently, the Cyberspace
Policy Research Group developed a Website Attribute Evaluation System
(WAES) which has been widely used (in adapted form) by researchers such
as Demchak et al (1998), La Porte (1999) and more recently, Pina et al.
(2007). These authors have focused mainly on the ownership of government
websites (i.e. is a government organization involved and in control of
website content?). Additionally, they focus on the presence of very basic
information about the government organization. For example, availability of
e-mail addresses, information about the organizational structure, or the
presence of a senior official’s vision of the organization’s future. They focus
only in part on the issue of transparency, such as whether reports or laws are
available online and if they are searchable through a search engine. This
focus on the technical means of improving government transparency has the
advantage that it can be generalized more easily to other websites. However,
it does not say a great deal about the information on the website itself. In
contrast, this paper will focus not on the technical means of transparency,
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but on the actual content itself. First, however, the concept of transparency
will be specified in more detail.
One way to model transparency is to conceptualize it using a
‘process and event’ model, where a government organization discloses
information during different stages in a policy process. This transparency
model has been developed by Heald (2006) and has been adapted for the
sake of this study (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
Three steps in policy making can be made transparent. First, a
process can be made transparent. One of the major processes in policy
making is the decision-making process that precedes the adoption of policy
measures. Important criteria regarding the ‘process and event’ type of
transparency are the degree of openness about the steps taken to arrive at a
decision, and the rationale behind a decision. This decision-making
transparency has been conceptualized extensively by Drew and Nyerges
(2004). Second, the government may disclose information about the policy
under development, such as the measures and plans taken to combat a
certain problem. Third, the policy outcomes or results of government policy
are disclosed.
This paper focuses on the first of these processes, decision-making
transparency, by investigating the disclosure of local council minutes. While
the disclosure of council minutes is not equivalent to transparency about the
Policy info
(measures)
Policy
Outcome
Information
about air
quality decision
-making
Air quality
policy measures
Actual air
quality
Technical trans
p
arenc
y
Decision-
making
process
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Grimmelikhuijsen: Transparency of Local Public Decision-Making
© 2010 Policy Studies Organization
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press
complete public decision-making process, it can be considered to be a
snapshot or reflection of public decision-making.
In this paper, the degree of transparency is determined by the
amount of information available in the local council minutes. The concept of
decision-making transparency is narrowed to adapt it for the experiment. It is
narrowed in the sense that it does not focus on the full process of public
decision-making, but merely on certain parts of public decision-making
materialized in the local council minutes. The measurement of the degree of
transparency will be discussed in further detail in the “Measures” section.
First, however, two theoretical perspectives on public decision-making are
elaborated, in order to formulate hypotheses.
Two Perspectives on Public Decision-Making
Increasing the transparency of council meetings by making the minutes
publicly accessible allows citizens to see what the council is actually
deciding. Two main views on public decision-making exist in the literature:
the traditional perspective emphasizes the rationality of decision-makers,
and the second perspective sees decision-making as an irrational, political
process. The aim of this section is not to give a full overview of all existing
literature on decision-making - the goal is to make an argument by reviewing
two ideal types of public decision-making: a model of bounded rationality
and a political, irrational process.
The first view consists of rationality and bounded rationality. The
most extreme and traditional view of public decision-making is this rational
process. First, all values are listed; for example, optimizing public health, a
prospering economy, and no traffic jams. Second, policy outcomes are rated
by how efficient they are in attaining these values. Third, the values are
weighed against each other, based on calculations. The next step is to list all
possible policy alternatives and their hypothetical effects, relying heavily on
scientific policy theories. Finally, based on this, a choice is made that would
maximize the selected values. Hoogerwerf (1990) and Vedung (2000) are
advocates for this rational approach of policy and public decision-making.
This view assumes a rational and calculating individual, an assumption
borrowed from rational choice theories (e.g. Homans, 1961; Blau, 1964;
cited in: Scott, 2000).
Advocates of the concept of ‘bounded rationality’ criticize this idea
by stating it to be a simplification of reality: people in normal life are
rational to only a limited extent. This idea that people are not completely
rational is long established and emphasizes that individuals and groups
simplify decision-making problems because of the difficulty of considering
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all alternatives and information (March, 1978; Lindblom, 1959). Since
decision makers lack the ability and resources to find the optimal solution,
they apply their ‘rationality’ only after having greatly simplified the choices
available. Therefore, it is said that decision makers aspire to develop
satisfactory, but not necessarily optimal, solutions (Simon, 1957).
This has consequences on how public decision-making should be
viewed. The aim of rational decision-making is to select the alternative that
results in the preferred set of all the possible consequences. On the other
hand, public decision-making is characterized as incremental and ‘muddling
through’ (Lindblom, 1959). Decisions are by no means completely rational,
as administrators or council members cannot have complete information.
The work of Stone (2001) refutes the ideas of rationality and
bounded rationality and goes one step further. She argues that decision-
makers are by no means rational and that the public decision-making process
is purely a political one. Moreover, Stone (2001) argues that ‘facts’ in
decision-making are not objective, as they are strategic representations of the
interests of stakeholders in the public decision-making process. Further,
Stone states that despite the irrational and incremental nature of public
decision-making, it is presented to the public as if it is rational, and the
model of ‘rational choice’ is being used. This could, therefore, have
profound consequences on how the public perceives local government, if
they are able to take a look ‘behind the scenes’.
Building on Stone’s idea, the general image of public decision-
making as being rational, or at least partly rational, may be threatened if
citizens take advantage of transparency in decision-making to ‘check
reality.’ This image of public decision-making mainly regards the perceived
competence of the council and whether they appear to make rational
decisions. Hence, if this image is damaged by the reality of decision-making,
which is non-rational, the citizens’ perspective of the council’s competence
is expected to be negative.
H1: Transparency, on a high and a low level, negatively affects the
perceived competence of a local council.
Although transparency of a decision-making process is expected to
negatively affect the perceived competence of a government organization,
the contrary might be true for perceived honesty. Giving full information
indicates that there is nothing to hide, hence improving perceived honesty.
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Grimmelikhuijsen: Transparency of Local Public Decision-Making
© 2010 Policy Studies Organization
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press
H2: A high level of transparency positively affects the perceived honesty of a
local council.
No specific expectations about the third dimension of perceived
trustworthiness, perceived benevolence, can be distilled from the theory or
views on public decision-making mentioned above. Perceived benevolence
is not expected to be affected by a high level of transparency. Disclosing
information about a decision-making process is only loosely connected to
the intentions of a government organization. Since benevolence concerns the
intentions of a government organization – i.e., its willingness to act in the
interest of its citizens – no effect of transparency is expected.
H3: Transparency does not affect the perceived benevolence of a local
council.
Besides these hypotheses distilled from decision-making theories,
the literature on website credibility and citizens’ attitudes towards
government distinguishes between two concepts that mostly play a
mediating role in the relationship between trust and transparency. This is
discussed in the next section.
The Role of Message Credibility and Knowledge
A second aim of this paper is to highlight the mechanism which determines
how transparency leads to less or more perceived trustworthiness. Figure 2
depicts a proposed research model; it is expected that both knowledge and
message credibility partly influence the relationship between transparency
and perceived trustworthiness. Knowledge presumably alters people’s
judgement criteria, while message credibility is thought to influence
transparency and trust. This is further explained in the two following
sections.
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Figure 2: Research Model
Message Credibility
Rosenbloom (2000) addresses a relevant issue regarding trust in online
interactions, as is the case between Internet transparency and trust.
According to him, ‘online interactions represent a complex blend of human
actors and technology’ (2000: 2). According to Rosenbloom it is not
immediately clear what or whom people trust in the case of online
interactions. For example, do people engage in a trusting relationship with
the system, website designers, online organizations?
To determine perceived credibility of web-based information,
Flanagin and Metzeger (2007) distinguish between message credibility, site
credibility and sponsor credibility. Message credibility is dependent on
aspects of the message itself, e.g. information quality and accuracy. Site
credibility refers to site features such as the visuals, or the amount of
information displayed on the website. Sponsor credibility depends on
perceptions of the website sponsor, in our case the government organization.
For the purposes of this study the distinction between ‘message’ and
‘sponsor’ credibility is especially relevant, since it is the message (i.e.
council minutes) that is manipulated in the experiment carried out in this
study. This experimental manipulation carried out in this study might not
only affect the government organization but also the credibility of the
message on their website (Arrow 1 in Figure 2). Therefore, there is a
difference between the trust people have in the information provided to
them, and their trust in the government organization. The latter is the
Perc. Trustworthiness
Transparency Message
Credibility
Knowledge
Benevolence
Com
p
etence
Honest
y
2
3
1
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Grimmelikhuijsen: Transparency of Local Public Decision-Making
© 2010 Policy Studies Organization
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press
dependent variable in this study, but the message is directly observable by
website visitors as they read it on the website. As such, website visitors try
to form a perception of the trustworthiness of a government organization
based on the message they read. This means the causal mechanism between
transparency and trust could be partly affected by the credibility of the
message on the website.
Knowledge
Specific knowledge about a government organization could have a
moderating effect (Arrow 3 in Figure 2), hence influencing the relationship
between message credibility and trust. It is expected that transparency leads
to more knowledge about the government agency, but besides a direct
mediating effect, knowledge about a government organization could also
have an indirect effect by altering the relationship between message
credibility and perceived trustworthiness. According to Mondak et al.
(2007), knowledge helps citizens to develop more specific criteria to make
judgments about the object of which they have specific knowledge. For
example, by having access to information about public decision-making,
people will judge the organization based on their knowledge of this process,
rather than basing their opinion on a general perception of government at the
national level. In this paper specific knowledge about the content of the
council’s decision-making is distinguished from more general knowledge
about politics and policies of local government (see “Measures” section for
details about how the knowledge construct was measured).
Method
The Case of Local Air Quality: The Dutch Context
This paper focuses on decision-making as it pertains to local air pollution.
Policies regarding air pollution can impact citizens’ lives, not only in terms
of where buildings and roads are constructed, but also in terms of personal
health. Air pollution affects several public interests: public health,
environment and economic interests. This study focuses on the decision-
making efforts regarding air quality policy to combat air pollution in a large
Dutch municipality. Decisions relating to air quality at the local government
level include (for example) whether they should impose traffic restrictions,
or build more roads to improve traffic flows. Although most citizens are not
very knowledgeable about air pollution, some action committees in
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neighbourhoods are active in their efforts to improve city regulations and
policies about air quality by influencing decision-makers.
The topic of air quality in Dutch cities receives a considerable
amount of local and national media coverage in the Netherlands, including
reports about municipalities that are failing to meet standards, and the
dangers of bad air quality. The relevance of air quality is highlighted due to
the high car density in the Netherlands: on average, there were 214 cars per
square kilometre in 2008, compared to 55 per square kilometre in Europe as
a whole (Statistics Netherlands, CBS). This is the highest car density in the
world. Although cars are not the only cause of bad air quality, they are one
of the main producers of fine dust and nitrogen dioxide in the air.
Governments in Europe are obligated to meet EU directives2 about
air quality, and local governments in the Netherlands are obligated to
develop plans to combat air pollution. Until all air pollution levels in a
municipality are below the criteria mentioned in the EU directives,
municipalities have to report on air quality regarding the levels of nitrogen
dioxide, fine dust particles, benzene and carbon monoxide. Important
decisions about air pollution plans and reports take place in the local council,
and transcripts of the meetings in which these are discussed must be,
according to local law, disclosed to the public.
Trust in government in general is a diffuse concept that is potentially
influenced by several factors, such as the economy, policy failures or
scandals (Nye et al., 1997; Peters, 1999) and is therefore difficult to link
with transparency. By selecting a specific government organization instead
of ‘trust in government’ in general, the relationship between transparency of
this government organization and trust in this government organization is
isolated from exogenous factors that might play a prominent role concerning
trust in government in general (see Bovens & Wille, 2008; Nye, 1997).
Therefore, a purer effect of transparency is measured and, moreover, it is
assumed to be more likely that transparency of a government organization
actually influences trust in this particular organization.
Design
The central question in this paper implies the existence of a causal effect of a
condition, ‘transparency’, on ‘trust’ in government agencies. To examine
this, this study has used an independent 1x3 experimental design. This
means that three group of participants were used in the experiment and were
separately investigated on one independent variable. The three groups varied
2 These are: 96/62/EG, 1999/30/EG, 2000/69/EG, 2002/3/EG, 2004/107/EG.
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Published by Berkeley Electronic Press
on the degree of transparency, with different amounts of information given
to them about the public decision-making process. The dependent variables
were the three dimensions of perceived trustworthiness: perceived
benevolence, perceived competence and perceived honesty.
Sample
The sample consisted of a total of 156 respondents, including first and
second-year college students (N=81), a group of professional masters
students (N=18) and 57 randomly approached visitors at the Population
Affairs Department of the municipality of Utrecht. The latter participants
were enticed to participate in the experiment by being offered a voucher.
The design and group distribution is shown in Table 1. The variables in
Table 1 are those that might influence trust in a specific government
organization, and thus that might distort the relationship between
transparency and trust. Also, some variables are not equally distributed
among groups. To avoid distortions, these variables are first checked for
significant effects on the dependent variables, and if necessary, they are
controlled by incorporating them as covariates in the analysis.
Table 1: Sample composition
Stimulus Measure-
ment
%
male
Av.
Age
% highly
educated
%
religious
Pol. Pref
(% l.w.)
No
transparency
N = 43
O
0 38.6 25.6 18.2 50 50.0
Low level
transparency
N = 57
X1 O
1 43.9 32.6 40.4 46.4 50.9
High level
transparency
N = 55
X2 O
2 50.9 29.9 38.2 45.5 41.8
Total 44.9 29.7 33.3 47.1 47.3
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Materials and Procedure
A total of three groups were distinguished in the experiment. Every
participant was randomly assigned to one of the groups by a link to a website
on their written instruction form (for the ‘no transparency group’ there was
no link at all). Group 1 was assigned to fill out a questionnaire without
visiting a government website (i.e., not using the available transparency).
The low-level transparency group (group 2) and the high-level transparency
group (group 3) were assigned to visit the website that showed the council’s
minutes. However, the website visited by group 2 was adapted for the sake
of the experiment, and showed much less information than the (unadapted)
high-transparency website with the full council minutes that was visited by
group 3.
The two different websites used in this experiment contained a short
explanation about how the municipal council makes decisions, and a
selection from the council minutes about the decision-making regarding a
plan to reduce air pollution in the city.
Before the experiment started, all participants were instructed orally
about what they could expect. They were told that they were participating in
a study to investigate the user-friendliness of government websites, instead
of the real goal of the study (i.e., investigating the effect of transparency on
trust). Also, participants were told that they first had to follow written
instructions and then fill out a questionnaire.
The written instructions specified exactly what participants could
read within the website, to ensure that everyone within each group read the
same sections during their visit, and to increase comparability between the
groups. On the written instructions, people had to answer four questions
about the comprehensibility of what they read in order to ensure that they
read the particular sections on the website. After they had completed the
instructions (and read the website) participants were instructed to close their
web browser. Next, they were instructed to fill out a questionnaire on paper.
After completing this questionnaire, the participants were debriefed and told
about the real goal of the study.
Measures
As described in the section “Three dimensions of perceived trustworthiness,”
three dimensions of perceived trustworthiness were distinguished and thus
were separately measured. Participants were asked specifically about the
perceived benevolence, competence, and honesty of the government
organization with regard to the topic (air quality policy).
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Grimmelikhuijsen: Transparency of Local Public Decision-Making
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Published by Berkeley Electronic Press
All dimensions were measured on a five-point scale and are derived
following past research (McKnight et al., 2002). Benevolence was measured
by the extent to which the government organization was perceived to be
doing its best to help citizens (1), to be acting in the interest of citizens (2),
and to be sincerely interested in the well-being of citizens (3). The
Cronbach’s alpha for this dimension was 0.77. Cronbach’s alpha is an index
indicating the extent to which separate items constitute an underlying
dimension. An alpha of 0.60 or higher is considered to be sufficient to group
items into one dimension. Competence was measured by the extent to which
the government organization was perceived to be capable, effective, skilful
and professional (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.86). Honesty was measured by
perceived sincerity, perceived honesty and the extent to which the
government organization was thought to honour its commitments
(Cronbach’s alpha = 0.83).
In addition, people were asked in the questionnaire to assess their
level of knowledge about air quality policy in the municipality. On a five-
point scale (1 = very little knowledge, 5 = very much knowledge) they
assessed their own knowledge about the air quality policy, the council
minutes regarding the development of the air quality policy, and their insight
into the decision-making process regarding municipal air quality policy
(Cronbach’s alpha = 0.82). Their general knowledge about local government
was measured by asking them to self-assess their knowledge of politics and
the policies of local government in general.
Message credibility was measured by asking the participants for
their perceptions regarding the extent to which they perceived the
information they had read to be complete and accurate (see Flanagin &
Metzger, 2007). Cronbach’s alpha for this measure was 0.77.
Transparency about the municipal council’s decision-making was
measured with regard to the extent of the information that was revealed. The
decision-making process consists of several contributions from people
within the council. The limited transparency group was only shown the first
two lines of five paragraphs from several political parties. Participants in the
full transparency group were shown the full contribution. Below is an
example of a phrase from a high level/full transparency3 selection:
3 Translated from the original Dutch text, some parts are left out to make it less lengthy.
The sentences are kept as close to the original format as possible, including those that are
a bit twisted in the original. The examples still give a good idea of what this particular
type of transparency looks like.
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• Mrs. [name] argues that the Air Quality Action Plan indicates that
the municipality wants to improve air quality. On several points this
must be made more realistic. What is the status of this document?
Will this lead to a decision regarding the realization of the plans, or
will they be developed within the projects? […]
The ambition of the plan is disappointing in some aspects, for
example regarding the fleet of cars. Concerning the environment,
natural gas for our party is not the best option, why was hybrid
energy not thought of? The same applies to buses; why were
alternative energy sources not thought of?
An example of a limited / low level of transparency:
• Mrs. [name] argues that the Air Quality Action Plan indicates that
the municipality wants to improve air quality. On several points this
must be made more realistic.
Results
The analysis is conducted in two stages. First, the research model (Figure 2)
is tested by carrying out a one-way multivariate analysis of covariance
(MANCOVA) to compare the results between the three levels of
transparency on the three dimensions of perceived trustworthiness.4,5
Second, a more specific group comparison is conducted to test the
hypotheses. Before attempting any further analysis, however, the
experimental set up was checked. In other words, do participants perceive
the experimental treatment in the way the researcher intended? This analysis
showed that participants perceived the highly transparent website to be the
one that contained the greatest amount of information. It differed
significantly from the no- and low-transparency group (t(89) = 2.007, p <
4 Covariates included are: Trust in government in general, gender, specific knowledge
and message credibility. Other control variables (mentioned in section 7.3) were
excluded from the analysis since they appeared not to have a significant effect on the
dependent variables.
5 The MANCOVA is followed-up by contrasts comparing the three level of transparency
with each other. Box’s M was not significant, indicating that covariances throughout the
experimental groups were homogeneous. In addition, no problems with multicollinearity
were detected and no outliers were evident so MANOVA was considered to be an
appropriate analysis technique. First, the overall means of each group for each dependent
variable is displayed in Table 2.
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0.05). In other words, the supply of more detailed information in the
experiment resulted in a perception of more information by participants.
As argued earlier in this paper, both specific knowledge about the
government organization under observation and message credibility might
play a partly influential role on perceived trustworthiness of the local
council. The first test determines whether transparency is a predictor for
these two variables. Then, the effect of these variables on perceived
trustworthiness will be statistically analyzed. Both analyses include
covariates, which control for their individual effects on the dependent
variables. As a result, the relationship between an independent and
dependent variable is a ‘purer’ measure, since confounding effects of the
covariates are controlled. However, because a great deal of possible
covariates are available and too many covariates weaken the power of the
statistical test, non-significant covariates are deleted one by one, until only
significant (p < 0.05) covariates are left (see Trochim & Donnelly, 2001).
Two separate ANCOVA analyses were carried out to assess the
effect of transparency on specific knowledge and message credibility. The
findings indicate a significant positive relationship between both
transparency and message credibility (F = 5.27, p = 0.024) and transparency
and specific knowledge (F = 3.44, p = 0.035).6 For the latter, it should be
noted that although transparency had a significant impact on specific
knowledge about the council for this particular topic (air quality policy), a
general knowledge about local politics was the most important driver.
The next step to test the model depicted in Figure 2 is to test whether
message credibility and specific knowledge affect perceived trustworthiness.
A One-way MANCOVA was carried out to test this, which is a test used to
compare the differences between groups on multiple dependent variables,
while controlling for one or more other variables (covariates).7 The statistical
procedure prescribes that first the overall multivariate effect is assessed. If
these turn out to be significant we may proceed to test group differences.
The overall effect of transparency on all three dependent variables –
perceived benevolence, competence and honesty – appeared to be significant
(F=3.08; p = 0.006). Therefore, testing group differences for each dimension
6 Significant covariates for information credibility: Trust in government (F=15.77, p <
0.001) and Previous Visit to website (F=4.77, p < 0.05), Adjusted R-square: 0.175.
Significant covariates for specific knowledge: ideology (F=4.11, p < 0.05), Age (F=7.97,
p < 0.01), predisposition to trust others (F=6.11, p < 0.05), general knowledge of
government (F=42.06, p < 0.001). Adjusted R-square: 0.346.
7 Again, Box’s M was not significant, no problems with multicollinearity were detected
and no outliers were evident.
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of perceived trustworthiness separately is allowed. The results are shown in
Table 2.
Table 2: Multivariate effects on perceived benevolence, competence and
honesty
Perceived benevolence Perceived competence Perceived honesty
F-ratio (p)Eta2 F-ratio (p) Eta2 F-ratio (p) Eta2
Transparency 1.75 .024 7.66** .097 3.787* .050
Modelled
covariates
Information
credibility 9.45** .062 22.14*** .134 9.57** .063
Specific
knowledge 4.27* .029 8.28** .055 1.32 .009
Message
credibility*
specific
knowledge
4.29* .029 10.04** .066 1.09 .008
Control
variables
Trust in
government in
general
23.47*** .141 28.54*** .166 43.79*** .234
Gender 2.92 .020 0.24 .000 9.48** .062
Previous Visit
(dummy) 0.76 .005 2.23 .015 2.03 .014
Intercept 0.29 .002 1.47 .010 0.07 .000
Adjusted R2 .247 .368 .402
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. F-ratios and partial eta-squared are displayed.
Table 2 presents three models: one for each dimension of perceived
trustworthiness. The adjusted r-square value at the bottom of the table
represents the extent to which all variables in the analysis are able to explain
the outcome of perceived benevolence, competence or honesty. The eta-
square on the right of each column is an unadjusted measure for the part of
variance explained by a specific predictor.8 The adjusted r-square for
perceived benevolence is acceptable for social science using constructs like
trust (0.247). The explanatory value for perceived competence and honesty
8 Ranging from 0 (variables explain nothing) to 1 (variables explain everything).
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are even higher (0.368 and 0.402). Transparency has the most profound
effect on perceived competence (p = 0.001). A somewhat weaker effect on
honesty (p = 0.025) is detected, yet perceived benevolence remains
unaffected.
Further, Table 2 provides evidence that message credibility is
important with regard to all dimensions of perceived trustworthiness.
Parameter estimates (not displayed in the table) show that message
credibility has a positive impact on these perceptions. Hence if people
perceive the message on the website to be more credible, they tend to
perceive the local council ‘behind’ the message to be more benevolent,
competent and honest. Specific knowledge about the local council only has a
slightly positive effect on benevolence and competence. Perceived honesty is
not influenced by the degree of specific knowledge about the local council.
The same is true concerning the interaction effect between knowledge and
message credibility. This means that the amount of specific knowledge about
the local council not only influences perceived trustworthiness directly, it
also negatively affects the relationship between message credibility and
perceived trustworthiness. In other words, when people possess more
specific knowledge, they will rely less on perceived message credibility
when coming up with a judgment of the government organization.
The model of perceived benevolence appeared to have the least
explanatory power. This was also the only dimension not to be significantly
affected by the degree of transparency. Benevolence is an ethical dimension
of perceived trustworthiness regarding the intentions of the local council,
which may be more difficult for people to assess based only on website
information. Although the modelled covariates prove to be significant, they
have less predictive power compared to the perceived competence model. In
addition, trust in government in general has slightly weaker significance than
in the two other models.
Trust in government in general proves to be the single strongest
predictor for all dimensions of perceived trustworthiness, and has especially
great explanatory power for perceived honesty (eta-squared = 0.234).
Therefore, people who believe that government in general is honest,
competent and benevolent will ascribe this quality to the local council as
well. The second control variable that affects honesty is gender. Women
tend to be more trusting towards government than men (see also Table 2).
Previous visits to the website of the municipalities appeared not to have any
significant effects on the individual dimension of perceived trustworthiness.9
9 The effect of the group of students was tested by adding it as a dummy variable to the
analysis, which showed there was no significant difference in the level of perceived
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In summary, perceived competence of an organization was affected
by transparency. Perceived honesty was influenced by transparency directly,
yet to a lesser extent than competence. Although perceived honesty was
significantly lower in the ‘low level of transparency’ group, this dimension
appeared to be deeply connected to a person’s predisposition to trust
government in general. Also, gender was an important extraneous significant
driver for honesty. In contrast with perceived honesty, the main sources of
perceived competence were knowledge and information credibility. This
seems to reflect the more utilitarian nature of competence, as opposed to the
ethical character of honesty.
The variance found in both perceived honesty and perceived
competence is explained rather well by the models. Adjusted r-squares of
0.402 and 0.368, are rather high for studies regarding hard to define concepts
such as trust. For example, these r-squares are particularly high compared to
large scale survey studies that examine the relationship between e-
government usage and attitudes toward government, which reported r-
squared values of approximately 0.1 and lower (see West, 2004; Welch et
al., 2005).
This concludes the first part of the statistical analysis, which shows
how transparency affects perceived trustworthiness. The relationship is
partly influenced by message credibility and specific knowledge. Trust in
government in general appears to be a strong predictor for all cases of
perceived trustworthiness. Despite this strong effect on people’s more
general image of government, transparency has a rather strong significant
direct effect on perceived competence and a somewhat weaker effect on
perceived honesty.
Next, the hypotheses formulated earlier in this paper are tested using
a so-called post hoc test, which allows researchers to make comparisons
between all groups for the dimensions that were significant in the preceding
MANCOVA test (i.e. perceived competence and honesty, see results in
Table 2). The results of the group comparisons are shown in Table 3.
trustworthiness of students compared to people recruited at the Public Affairs
Department. Since this variable was non-significant it was later removed from the test, in
line with the proposed procedure of removing non-significant covariates until they are all
significant (Trochim & Donnelly, 2001).
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Table 3: Group comparison of perceived benevolence, competence and
honesty
Dependent
Variable Level of transparency Mean (SE) Vs. Low (1) Vs. High (2)
Perceived
Benevolence
0. No transparency 3.62 (.10) n.s. n.s.
N=40 1. Low level of transparency 3.46 (.08) n.s.
2. High level of transparency 3.34 (.08) .
Perceived
Competence
0. No transparency 3.61 (.09) .386 (.11)** .495 (.13)***
N=45 1. Low level of transparency 3.23 (.07) n.s.
2. High level of transparency 3.12 (.08)
Perceived
Honesty
0. No transparency 3.46 (.10) .317 (.12)* n.s.
N=42 1. Low level of transparency 3.15 (.07) n.s.
2. High level of transparency 3.15 (.08)
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. Means displayed, standard errors in
parentheses. Covariates appearing in the model are evaluated at the following
values: Previous visit = 0.70, Specific knowledge = 1.78, Trust in government in
general = 3.40, Message credibility = 3.57, Gender = 1.55 (1=man, 2=woman).
As Table 3 shows, the largest differences are found when comparing
no transparency versus low and high levels of transparency within the
competence dimension. Within the perceived honesty dimension, only the
low- and no-transparency groups differed significantly. Although the mean
difference between no- and high-transparency is nearly as large, it has less
strength because of the greater standard error (SE).
The second observation is that perceived competence and honesty
levels are actually lower within the transparency groups than in the no
transparency group. This means that the participants who read about the
decision-making process of the local council on the website perceived the
council to be less competent than the participants who did not read the
information. Hypothesis 1 stated that transparency, on a high and a low
level, would negatively affect the perceived competence of a local council.
As such, hypothesis 1 is confirmed. Further, participants who experienced a
low level of transparency thought the local council was less honest.
Hypothesis 2 suggested that a high level of transparency positively affects
the perceived honesty of a local council. This hypothesis should therefore be
rejected. In addition it was hypothesized that transparency would not affect
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perceived benevolence; this null-hypothesis can be confirmed, as no
significant difference was found for this variable.
Discussion
This article has sought to explore the effect of transparency of local public
decision-making on the perceived trustworthiness of the local council. One
of the findings is that trust in government in general plays a major role in the
perceived trustworthiness of the local council.
This appears to be the major driver behind perceived trustworthiness
of the local council, and it especially affects perceived honesty. It is also an
important driver behind perceived benevolence, which is not influenced by
transparency and only slightly by message credibility and specific
knowledge. Benevolence refers to whether the local council is willing to act
in the interest of citizens, i.e. it concerns the intentions of the council. This is
an ethical trait that is difficult to assess from local council minutes, and
reflects what people believe to be the nature of government (acting in
citizens’ interests or in their own interests).
Hence, the levels of perceived trustworthiness of the council are
largely determined by people’s fundamental pre-existing impressions of
government in general. Van de Walle (2004) examined the connection
between the performance of government organizations and trust in
government in general. He concluded that general trust in government is not
influenced by the performance of a particular government organization, but
that it is grounded in a more general attitude of people towards government.
This argument is in line with our findings regarding perceived honesty and
perceived benevolence. These are, in contrast to perceived competence,
ethical and very fundamental perceptions of citizens about government. This
also explains why knowledge did not have a significant effect on perceived
honesty; this dimension does not increase with more or less knowledge, and
it is presumably determined by general beliefs about government.
Consequently, it is possible to conclude that cultural context is
important for the perceived trustworthiness of the local council. For
example, the Netherlands has traditionally been a country where citizens
have a high level of trust in government, whereas in the US, over the past
few decades, citizens have tended to distrust government (Nye et al., 1997;
Tolbert & Mossberger, 2006). For example, a cultural explanation for the
low level of trust in the US might be the emphasis and increasing importance
of the individual and the consequent disintegration of communities and
family (Nye et al., 1997; Putnam, 2000).
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Having said this, even when the effect of trust in government in
general is taken into account, we have shown that transparency does alter
perceived competence and – to a smaller extent – perceived honesty in the
local council.
First, the local council was perceived to be less competent after
people had read its minutes. Transparency of local council minutes does not
show public decision-making as a smooth rational process, but rather brings
out the bickering and ultimately political character of this process (see Stone,
2001). This touches on the dimension of perceived competence. Perceived
competence is a dimension of perceived trustworthiness that is utilitarian
and more concrete than the other dimensions (honesty and benevolence), and
which may therefore be easier for people to assess in this single interaction.
This outcome regarding perceived competence is in line with the argument
of Welch et al. who suggest that ‘individuals with a greater desire to interact
with government go to Web sites; however, once they use them, they are
disappointed’ (Welch et al., 2005: 387).
Regarding the use of government websites, the issue is to what
extent these websites, and especially council minutes, are being read by
citizens. For everyday local government the actual negative effect on their
perceived competence might by canceled out by this.
Perceived honesty was negatively affected by a low level of
transparency, although a positive effect was hypothesized. Giving full
information about council minutes seems only to meet the expectation that
this is part of a normally functioning government. This is in line with
research by Piotrowski and Van Ryzin (2007) who investigated US citizens’
expectations regarding transparency of local council proceedings. On the
question ‘Do you think citizens should or should not have access to
transcripts of city or town council meetings[?]’, the average score was 4.47
on a five-point scale. This high citizen demand for transparency reflects the
expectation they have on this particular topic.
It seems like disclosure of local council minutes is a conditio sine
qua non for trust in the local council. In Western democracies transparency
of public decision-making has been a long-established form of transparency,
and it might be concluded that it is perceived to be the standard. Combined
with the emergence of the Internet, which has increased people’s
expectations and demands regarding access to a great deal of government
data (Shapiro, 1999), transparency of council minutes might be the least
people expect from local government. In addition, disclosing minutes on
municipal Web sites is not something new; it is a common practice for
municipalities in the Netherlands.
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A part of the effect of transparency on perceived trustworthiness is
influenced by message credibility. Participants who encountered a high level
of transparency found the information more credible than those who read the
council minutes at the lower transparency level. Higher message credibility
is related to more positive perceptions of the council’s benevolence,
competence and honesty. However, this cannot compensate for the overall
negative effect of transparency on perceived competence and partly on
perceived honesty.
The second influential variable in the model is specific knowledge
about the local council, which has no effect on perceived honesty, a small
effect on perceived benevolence and a moderate effect on perceived
competence. Also, knowledge weakens the relationship between message
credibility and perceived competence and benevolence. Hence, the effect of
knowledge is twofold. The level of specific knowledge was slightly
improved by transparency and was largely predicted by the general level of
knowledge people already possessed. This means that people who already
know a great deal about politics and policy in a municipality are more likely
to learn from the council minutes. These people are also more trusting
regarding the council’s benevolence and competence.
The moderating effect, i.e., the influence of knowledge about the
council on the relationship between message credibility and perceived
trustworthiness, is in line with the findings by Mondak et al. (2007). They
discovered that if people acquire more knowledge about the U.S. Congress,
they develop more specific criteria to make judgments. In the case of
transparency and trust, knowledge shifts the way in which trustworthiness is
affected - less by message credibility, more based on knowledge. People are
less likely to assume that a local council is willing to act in the interests of its
citizens, based on credibility, but this perception is based on what people
think they know of government organization. Thus specific knowledge
becomes the ‘primary driver’ of people’s thoughts in this case (Bigley &
Pearce, 1998).
Two limitations of the design of this study are discussed in the next
two paragraphs: the external validity of the experiment and one problem of
causality. Regarding external validity, the aim of experiments in general is
not to achieve a perfect external validity but to try to assess causal
relationships and generalize the mechanism at work. The results of this study
are hardly generalizable to the total population in the Netherlands.
Nevertheless, if we compare the percentage of highly educated participants
in the sample to the general population of the Netherlands, these percentages
are comparable: 33.3 percent in the sample versus 26.4 percent of the
population in 2008 (Source: CBS). The average age of our sample is 29.7
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years, which is nearly 10 years younger than the average of the population
(38.65 in 2005, CBS). This is due to the bias towards students in the sample.
Still, this might not be problematic with respect to external validity, as Van
Dijk (2008) showed that people who use government websites are relatively
young compared to the total population. Having said this, it should be noted
that the main goal of this study – being an experiment – is not to achieve a
perfect external validity, but to closely examine a theoretical effect by
comparing relatively homogeneous groups while statistically controlling for
possible extraneous variables. However, we should be careful about making
broad statements about the relationship between transparency and trust.
Also, the national context restricts the external validity of our results. The
Netherlands has traditionally been a country with high levels of trust,
whereas in (for example) the U.S., people tend to distrust government more.
The second issue is that the causality of the effect of message
credibility on perceived trustworthiness can only be assumed theoretically.
Whether higher levels of message credibility lead to higher levels of
perceived trustworthiness or vice versa cannot be assessed using this
experiment alone. Presumably a higher level of perceived trustworthiness
also causes people to think that the information is more credible. In this
sense a feedback relationship could exist between perceived trustworthiness
and message credibility.
Conclusion
In this paper, we have investigated the central question: ‘Does Internet
transparency of public decision-making affect citizen trust in government?’
To analyze this question, we conducted an experiment concerning the
transparency of the meeting minutes of a local council in the Netherlands.
The results offer evidence for a limited but significant negative effect of
transparency on the perceived competence and perceived honesty of a local
governmental organization. Trust in government in general was the major
driver for all three dimensions of perceived trustworthiness. Further,
message credibility and increased specific knowledge about the local council
partly moderated this effect. Specific knowledge also weakened the
relationship between message credibility and perceived trustworthiness.
Although this study is obviously subject to some limitations regarding
statistical generalization (see “Discussion” section), this conclusion
discusses what could be the broader implications of these findings on a
theoretical level.
Public decision-making is not rational, though it may appear to be to
the general public (Stone, 2001). It is not a smooth process in which all
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values and solutions are listed, weighed and then chosen. It is incremental,
and it is a process that might involve petty arguments, a lack of resources
and information: the ‘optimal’ solution cannot be determined objectively.
Hence, the expectation of rationalism in public decision-making is not met
and can never be met (see Lindblom, 1959; Stone, 2001).
This apparent gap between expected rationality and the reality of
bounded rationality may lead to less trust in government. According to
Bovens (2003), demystification of government is an important price we pay
for increased transparency. Transparency could contribute to political
cynicism and citizen trust in government might decline. As a result, while
people may expect the local council to be transparent, in the end there seems
to be a gap between public expectations of rationalism and the reality shown
through transparency. The reality can reveal the local council is much more
chaotic that might be hoped or expected, and public decision-making is, in
Lindblom’s words, often a process of ‘muddling through.’
The effect of transparency should, however, not be overstated. This
study offers insights into the magnitude of the effect of transparency.
Although an effect of transparency is certainly present, people’s
predisposition towards government in general predicts their perceived
trustworthiness in this specific case much better, especially for ethical values
such as benevolence and honesty.
That said, government transparency is considered to be a democratic
value, an essential element for a high-performing and trustworthy
government. From a democratic perspective, the ‘demystification’ of
government, including political and incremental public decision-making
processes, is a necessity. Yet transparency as an instrument to increase
citizen trust in government, in this very specific organization of local
government, seems to have failed to fulfil its promise.
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