International organizations, policy experts, and nongovernmental organizations promote greater governmental transparency as a crucial reform to enhance accountability and curb corruption. Transparency is predicted to deter corruption in part by expanding the possibilities for public or societal accountability, that is, for citizens and citizens associations to monitor, scrutinize, and act to hold public office holders to account. Although the societal accountability mechanism linking transparency and good government is often implied, it builds on a number of assumptions seldom examined empirically. This article unpacks the assumptions of principal-agent theories of accountability and suggests that the logic of collective action can be used to understand why exposure of egregious and endemic corruption may instead demobilize the demos (i.e., resignation) rather than enhance accountability (i.e., indignation). We explore these theoretical contentions and examine how transparency affects three indicators of indignations versus resignation-institutional trust, political involvement, and political interest-given different levels of corruption. The empirical analyses confirm that an increase in transparency in highly corrupt countries tends to breed resignation rather than indignation.

Abstract.  Political theory often attributes democratic legitimacy to the fairness of the processes by which collective decisions are taken; empirical research by contrast has primarily investigated whether citizens' approval of democratic institutions derives from satisfaction with the substantive output of those institutions. This article examines whether assessments of decision‐making processes shape public willingness to consent to authority. The role of procedural fairness in institutional legitimacy has previously only been investigated in the context of the United States, and has fallen short of demonstrating that procedural assessments actually have a causal effect on institutional legitimacy. Panel survey data of attitudes in a large‐scale land use issue provide the empirical base of the analysis. The results indicate that assessments of procedural fairness have a bearing on two conceptualizations of subjective legitimacy: respondents' trust for the authority and their willingness to accept a decision outcome.

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Policymakers and researchers often cite the importance of government transparency for strengthening accountability, reducing corruption, and enhancing good governance. Yet despite the prevalence of such claims, definitional precision is lacking. As a consequence, approaches to measurement have often cast a wide net, in many cases tapping into the capacity of government institutions more generally, resulting in empirical findings that are ambiguous in terms of interpretation. This paper argues that the operationalization and measure of government transparency should be tailored to two main parameters of the phenomenon under investigation: the principals and purpose of the information. We advance a new measure of government transparency argued to be more suitable for the study of the role of government transparency with respect to probity. The data derive from a survey of public administration experts in 102 countries carried out by the Quality of Government Institute and allow for a more reliable analysis of the effects of transparency on reducing corruption, and the analyses suggest that an association indeed exists.

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