Impact of demographic, political and financial factors on municipal transparency: a dynamic panel approach

Abstract

PurposeThis paper seeks to identify some of the most important drivers of Portuguese local government transparency in their activities over time. The recent literature on good governance has repeatedly identified transparency as central to promoting accountability, preventing corruption and mismanagement and stimulating greater civic engagement. As local government is the main provider of many primary services to the population, evaluating its transparency is especially relevant given that misconduct or maladministration will have a strong impact on the population's well-being. Given increased diffusion of European good governance norms and practices, the authors believe the Portuguese case to be relevant across the EU.Design/methodology/approachThe authors develop a dynamic panel data model to evaluate the simultaneous influence of both political and contextual variables on the municipal transparency index (MTI) in 308 Portuguese municipalities during the period from 2013 to 2017.FindingsThe results suggest support for previous studies that found increased Internet enabled transparency in municipalities with low levels of indebtedness (per capita), are more highly populated, are governed by left-wing parties, demonstrating higher levels of financial efficiency. The urban/rural status, measured by population density, is not a significant predictor.Originality/valueThe paper seeks to confirm earlier analyses of these same data over a longer period of years to substantiate the validity of those findings. This is important especially in the context of the political variable, to demonstrate it was not necessarily a particular collection of left-wing mayors, but that the relationship holds over time, across administrations, because the dataset covers two election periods.

Measuring quality of popular annual financial reports: Features of the rewarded US reporting municipalities

“…In fact, they show a nonsignificant relationship between POPDENS and PAFRQ. This result, although unexpected, confirms what was found by Navarro‐Galera et al (2018) and Brás and Dowley (2021).…”

“…In this regard, some studies have found that population density is associated with greater public local transparency (Alcaraz-Quiles et al, 2014;Homsy & Warner, 2015;Lowatcharin & Menifield, 2015;Ortiz-Rodríguez et al, 2018), while other studies have found a negative relationship (Gesuele & Metallo, 2017). Other studies have instead found a nonsignificant association between the population density and the transparency of local governments (Brás & Dowley, 2021;Navarro-Galera et al, 2018). From a theoretical standpoint, according to agency and legitimacy theories, local governments have a greater incentive to legitimize their actions and reduce information asymmetries in presence of a greater population density that requires specific information needs regarding public choices (Alcaraz-Quiles et al, 2014).…”

“…Indeed, municipalities with larger populations have greater human and monetary resources and greater political visibility. Consequently, in light of the agency and legitimacy theories, public administration provides more information to limit the problems associated with information asymmetry and to regain legitimacy, avoiding discontent among citizens (Brás & Dowley, 2021; Guillamón et al, 2016). Therefore, in light of the above, it is possible to introduce the following hypothesis:H1 Population size positively affects popular annual financial report quality .…”

“…A larger population size implies the existence of an ever-increasing number of stakeholders who require more accurate and timely information regarding the implementation of public activities. Therefore, increased requests for information from a wider audience of citizens and the need for local governments to fill information asymmetries and to obtain legitimacy promote a better quality of the information disclosed (Albalate delSol, 2013;Brás & Dowley, 2021) and could therefore explain the positive impact of population size on the quality of popular annual financial reports. In this regard, the results obtained extend those obtained byBenito et al (2010),González et al (2011), and Albalate del Sol (2013).Hypothesis 2 (H2) is also supported by the results.…”

Design of the participatory budget: how to turn citizens into process protagonists

“…A final remark could be dedicated to the participation tools. As seen in 17% of LGs analysed, a fundamental way of improving participation is to use ICT technologies that promote citizens' active involvement and strengthen accountability and transparency, which is essential for this type of PA (Brás and Dowley, 2021). However, in 51% of LGs, collaboration is also stimulated by public meetings and workshops, where people can freely discuss projects.…”