The principle of open government in Schengen and the European Union: Democratic retrogression?

Curtin, Deirdre; Meijers, H.

doi:10.54648/cola1995019

Cited by 18 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Although the concept is not new, and the Scandinavian countries have long implemented it (Curtin and Meijers, 1995;Grønbech-Jensen, 1998), since the initiative of President Obama (2009) to improve the performance of the United States administration, Open government (OG) has gained increasing prominence worldwide in both political and academic agendas (Lee and Kwak, 2012;Wirtz and Birkmeyer, 2015). This has been reflected in the constitution of a specific international organization such as the Open Government Partnership, in numerous measures adopted at every level of government-supranational, state, regional, and local-and in the proliferation of academic literature and case studies on the topic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From open government to open parties in Europe. A framework for analysis

Villaplana,

Megías,

Sandri

2023

Front. Polit. Sci.

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Open government (OG) is an increasingly used management model among the public administrations of European countries and of the European Union, which is currently working on The Path to the Digital Decade. This supposes the application of measures to promote proximity and citizenship's prominence in many public policies, leading to improved quality of democracy. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to a forced digitalization of many public services. Despite the fact that studies on OG do not usually focus on them, political parties are essential actors for the success or failure of OG measures, both from a bottom-up and a top-down perspective, on public administration transformation. Moreover, political parties are transforming themselves into more open organizations at the same time. We define open parties as political parties with high standards in transparency, participation, and collaboration. They also feature high degrees of organizational digitalization. This article proposes a framework for analyzing political parties' openness and explores available empirical data on different aspects related to OG in the European context. We have found that most parties possess a good level of local organizational strength but still need to reach better levels of anticorruption commitment, to form stronger ties with affiliated organizations, and especially to improve the participation of members and activists in their decision-making. Furthermore, elitism, clientelism, and populistic rhetoric represent significant obstacles that could hinder the party reform process.

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