2014. Jang, Yong Suk, Museok Cho, and Gili S. Drori. “National Transparency: Global Trends and...

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published online 14 May 2014International Journal of Comparative SociologyYong Suk Jang, Munseok Cho and Gili S Drori

National transparency: Global trends and national variations

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IJ CSNational transparency: Global trends and national variations

Yong Suk JangYonsei University, Korea

Munseok ChoHansung University, Korea

Gili S DroriHebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

AbstractNation-states worldwide are institutionalizing a culture of transparency and accountability. In our analyses of data reported in the United Nations (UN) Statistical Yearbooks since 1970, we identify two main trends: (1) national governments are providing a greater amount of data on a larger set of social, political, and economic domains, and (2) national governments increasingly offer such data in accordance with international standards introduced by the UN. In addition, we find that the overall cross-national trend toward transparency and accountability, as measured by the standard reporting of national accounts to the UN from 1970 to 2000, is driven by a unique set of factors in each time period. Specifically, domestic and economic conditions drove the trend toward transparency before 1990, whereas political factors have driven transparency since then. Throughout the period studied, the presence of links between a given country and world society has increased the likelihood that it will engage in transparent reporting. We conclude that active networking with international governmental organizations, such as the UN, teaches governments the norm of transparency, inculcating them with the rationales of public accountability and proper governance.

KeywordsData reporting, governance, transparency, United Nations, world society

Introduction

The recent media sensations surrounding WikiLeaks’ and Edward Snowden’s release of classified government documents overshadow a much longer process of setting transparency as the corner-stone of governance initiatives worldwide, particularly since the 1990s. Transparency, or the public

Corresponding author:Yong Suk Jang, Department of Public Administration, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Korea.Email: [email protected]

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2 International Journal of Comparative Sociology

disclosure of information, is hailed as an efficient management practice that reduces uncertainty and thus contributes to the stabilization of markets and politics by building trust. From a market perspective, however, transparency is seen as carrying the risk of exposure and vulnerability. For this reason, an important thread in economics and finance research has centered on the optimal equilibrium between transparency and control (Faust and Svensson, 2002) and the optimization of the secrecy policy (Cukierman and Meltzer, 1986). From a political perspective, transparency is considered an important feature of a well-functioning administration that adheres to democratic and empowering principles. From an international perspective, transparency creates a platform for international trust and for better assessment and implementation of international treaties; a lack of disclosure, on the other hand, implies a weakening, if not sabotage, of the international regime (Mitchell, 1998). All of these perspectives associate transparency with accountability and public review of official affairs. Managers and politicians alike are therefore advised to be more respon-sible to their constituencies, stakeholders, and clients (Held and Koenig-Archibugi, 2005). In the interests of advancing accountability and transparent governance, international organizations encourage data disclosure by members and even propose standards for data collection and display. The United Nations (UN), the prime international intergovernmental organization, encourages member states to disclose national information and has formulated procedures for the compilation and dissemination of national accounts data.

In spite of wide acknowledgment that transparency is an important aspect of governance, most research is limited to descriptions of specific transparency initiatives and the creation of ‘how-to manuals’ that address the dilemma of balancing disclosure and secrecy (e.g. Transparency International, 2006). This tradition does not explore the historical and social conditions that drive transparency, nor does it describe the global scope of such phenomena. Our work, therefore, seeks to add historical and cross-national perspectives to the study of transparency. Specifically, we (a) trace the cross-national and longitudinal trends of transparency and (b) explore the factors – domestic and international, as well as economic and political – that drive nation-states toward broader dis-closure of information. To trace the trends of national transparency, we focus our analysis on a specific measure, the reporting of national accounts data, and rely on the availability of such data in the UN Statistical Yearbook. By analyzing patterns of data availability, we comment on the changing global culture of governance and argue that the pressure toward standardized data disclo-sure creates a new form of transparency that is tightly linked to accountability and often explained in terms of efficiency. In this way, we offer an institutionalist explanation of the globalization of transparency, highlighting the culture of world society, and challenge functionalist explanations.

Historical overview of transparency

From functional to cultural approaches

Transparency refers to the willingness and ability to disclose information to relevant parties (Grigorescu, 2003). Transparent governance extends into various social sectors and levels of analy-sis. Transparency means the disclosure by a corporation of corporate information, such as its rev-enue, to a business association or to a regulatory supervising agency. It also refers to the submission of national accounts by a governmental agency to international associations. Transparent govern-ance is evinced, therefore, in various acts of government and management, including the drafting of access-to-information laws, the existence of telecommunication infrastructure, the initiation of E-Government programs, the allowance of a free press (see Relly and Sabharwal, 2009), and the existence of guidelines for the disclosure and reporting of accounts (see Aggarwal et al., 2009). This definition of transparency has three core components: the act of disclosure, the matter being



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disclosed, and the agents that either disclose the information or are its recipients. Accordingly, we choose a specific empirical focus for our analyses of transparency: We understand the notion of disclosure to mean reporting by national governments; we specify the information disclosed as national accounts data; and we specify the audience for such disclosure as the UN and the world society that the UN notionally represents. Therefore, for the purpose of this study, we identify transparency as the willingness and ability of national governments to disclose national accounts data to UN agencies. Like other gross national data,1 the national score we award for transparency is general, yet it allows for scaled cross-national comparison and the identification of global trends.

The definition of, and attitudes toward, institutional transparency have changed dramatically over time. Transparency once implied weakness and vulnerability because it made critical informa-tion available to all (Smith, 2001); today, however, transparency is understood as part of legitimate governance. Therefore, current understandings of transparency align with the current discourse of civil and political rights and with the rise of representative government and competitive politics, both of which redefine secrecy as problematic and delegitimized.

This historical transition is evident when examining past regulation of information disclosure. Building on a long Western tradition of debates on public scrutiny of leaders and governments,2 the world’s first information disclosure law, entitled the Freedom of the Press Act, was passed in Sweden in 1766 (Blanton, 2002). Most subsequent legislation was enacted in direct response to abuse of authority or political competition. For example, in 1966, the United States passed the Freedom of Information Act in response to 10 years of pressure by the Democratic Party for access to information about Republican decisions under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Adler, 1997). Under similar pressure from political opposition, although in response to bribery scandals, the Freedom of Information statute was passed in Canada in 1982 (Blanton, 2002) and a national law on access to information was passed in Japan (Repeta, 1999, 2001).

Today, national transparency initiatives, if not laws, are common worldwide, and many interna-tional organizations champion the establishment of transparent governance (see Kahler and Lake, 2003; Timmermans and Epstein, 2010). Currently, two distinct approaches to information disclo-sure are found in discussions of transparency: a functionalist rationale, which highlights the utili-tarian benefits of transparency, and a cultural rationale, which focuses on transparency as a norm of appropriateness.

Transparency as a functional imperative

Most literature on transparency highlights the functional role and benefits of information disclo-sure (Heinrich, 2003). Transparency builds trust in government and democracy (Rose and Haerpfer, 1995), enhances confidence in a country’s economy, and leads to greater economic prosperity and political stability. Cady and Gonzalez-Garcia (2007) found that the dissemination of data on the liquidity of foreign currency reduces the volatility of exchange rates because it allows actors in the market to assess the overall macroeconomic situation. Similarly, Gelos and Wei (2005) argued that transparency encourages greater foreign investment, suggesting that it is a crucial component of a country’s integration into global markets and, by implication, of national development. Nonetheless, some research has revealed that transparency has mixed economic consequences due to informa-tion asymmetry and economic inefficiency (Wong and Welch, 2004). As a result, finding the opti-mal balance between transparency and secrecy and formulating strategies for balancing transparency and control have become important challenges.

The functional approach to transparency can be found at both the national and international levels. Whereas some regard transparency to be a function of domestic conditions and interests (Walter, 2008), from an international perspective, transparency is associated with policy




compliance (Mitchell, 1998). International initiatives to bolster transparency are related to the formation of international treaties (Chayes and Chayes, 1995). Compliance and cooperation with international regulatory regimes are ensured by the requirement that countries report information regularly to the overseeing international body. It is assumed that the submission of information allows policy makers to better assess and revise international regulatory arrangements.

The functionalist arguments in support of transparency, prevalent in scholarly works and advo-cacy statements, rest on a set of ontological assumptions about the rationality of social actors and the calculative nature of their actions (Keohane and Nye, 2003). If transparency is seen as a matter of rational choice, it becomes a desirable feature of governance because it creates channels for political engagement and fosters economic confidence. World society theory (Meyer et al., 1997) challenges this understanding by highlighting the constructed nature of social policy and focusing on transparency as a global cultural model or norm.

Transparency as a transnational norm

The call for greater transparency now resonates worldwide. The accountability of responsible par-ties and the transparency of organizational procedures are commonly considered as twin concepts that embody proper governance (Drori, 2006). Importantly, transparency is not just desired, but required (Carruthers, 1995; Meyer, 1986). This requirement is not necessarily based on a proven functional imperative; rather, it stems from a cultural model of proper governance (Drori, 2006). As such, transparency has emerged as a new transnational norm in world society, ontologically linked to the dual ideals of social progress and social justice; thus, it is justified in terms of the dual goals of organizational efficiency (often termed ‘development’) and empowered social involve-ment (often termed ‘democracy’). For these reasons, administrative systems (e.g. governments and corporate headquarters) provide data and information to the public, broadly defined, and in this way explain who they are and what they do. Nation-states reason that improving the quality of their statistics and the soundness of their data will contribute to economic efficiency and political pro-gress. Meanwhile, companies’ profit statements and balance sheets are considered not simply eco-nomic outputs, but morally legitimate expressions of fair economic behaviors (Jang, 2005).

Dependent on universalistic notions of management, the transparency norm has spread world-wide, regardless of differences in the social and economic conditions of societies where it is reflected in policy. Furthermore, transparency is emerging as an appropriate practice of governance in an increasing number of social sectors. Governments are under pressure to improve transparency in a broad range of social spheres, including local politics, human rights, defense, democracy, fam-ily relations, and welfare.

The pressure on governments for greater transparency comes from various constituencies, and the global isomorphism of transparency initiatives takes coercive, normative, and mimetic forms. International organizations, even while they themselves undergo reforms toward greater transparency (Woods, 2001), serve as ‘teachers’ of the norm of transparency. Some of the impact of international organizations is direct: World financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), offer aid only when client states disclose financial data and implement governance reforms for greater transparency. Another type of pressure is more diffuse and offered in the form of professional expertise. Local professionals (e.g. accountants, economists, lawyers, and business consultants) spread ideas about transparency, as do interna-tional associations of professionals (e.g. the International Accounting Standards Committee, IASC3), international governmental organizations (e.g. the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute of Statistics), and international treaty organizations (e.g. the Kyoto Protocol). In addition to their role in endorsing transparency, these



Jang et al. 5

sites of professional expertise serve as watchdogs for compliance by developing and publicizing standardized measures for their objectives. The consolidation of such epistemic communities into formal international professional groups, such as the IASC, has contributed to the establishment of standardized formats for information compilation and reporting (Davis et al., 2010). Such standardization is the most salient result of professional pressure, which is exerted in the form of either required mandates or recommended ‘soft law’ (meaning mostly voluntary standards).

The worldwide dissemination of this emerging norm is further expedited by the assumption that professional and scientific information is value-neutral. Guidelines for data compilation, such as the Assurances of Integrity section of the IMF Manual on Fiscal Transparency (2001), specifically enumerate the professional ethics that are to govern any data compilation, analysis, and disclosure. In this sense, transparency standards and models of accountability produced by international organizations and professional associations are perceived as scientific and accurate, and their pre-dicted consequences are presented as rationally modeled relations with professional and value-neutral standing (Davis et al., 2010). Building on the assumption of value-neutrality of professional data analysts, the diffusion of transparency through data reporting has been encouraged by the impulse toward quantification (Espeland and Stevens, 2008). Quantification was part of the social planning practices on both sides of the Iron Curtain and during the post-Cold War rise of the ‘audit society’, when a stronger market-oriented theme emerged (Power, 1999).

The norms of transparency came to be anchored in specific procedures and organizational rou-tines, some of which were regarded as quite benign. One procedure that became routine practice in many international organizations was the statistics-based method of filling gaps in data reports based on categorical estimation (World Bank, 2010). The development of such estimation and substitution methods was at the core of several recent transparency reforms (Woods, 2001). Together, these routine practices, which were drafted and then promoted by various international organizations, formed an international transparency architecture (see, Arnold, 2009) referred to as the ‘standards-surveillance-compliance system’ (Wade, 2007). With the intent of addressing the problem of systemic risk in the global financial system, the web of transparency-minded interna-tional organizations was nevertheless predicated on ‘soft law’ modes of compliance. To summa-rize, the globalization of administrative practices and governance structures has ushered in the globalized norm of transparency. A country’s level of transparency therefore reflects its embedded-ness in the world polity.

Explaining the globalization of transparent governance

The dramatic global expansion of transparency is undisputed. Various instruments of transparent governance, such as the adoption of freedom-of-information legislation or greater access to infor-mation through media or e-infrastructure, are on the rise worldwide (Ackerman and Sandoval-Ballesteros, 2006; Relly and Sabharwal, 2009). This frenzied adoption of transparent governance measures is explained by two competing theories. On the one hand, many assert that transparency forms a platform for stability and growth, thus furthering extensive global economic and political integration. Expectations about the ability of transparency to reduce failures and crises of govern-ance and build trust among partners are based on findings regarding the links between disclosure, market stability, and the integration of firms into global trade (see Khanna et al., 2006). Overall, the disclosure of information is regarded as an operational imperative.

On the other hand, world society theory stands in clear opposition to this functional model of transparency. According to this theory, transparency measures are not merely cosmetic (Relly and Sabharwal, 2009: 155), but are diffusing worldwide because of their legacy as part of the current model of proper governance. Our study examines these two competing explanations of the




globalization of transparency. We derive hypotheses for the causal mechanisms that have driven cross-national patterns of transparency since 1970 and evaluate the historical shift from functional factors to cultural factors as the primary drivers of this global process of institutionalization. To perform this assessment, we start by describing the UN Statistical Yearbook as a particular site of international transparency.

The UN statistical yearbook as a site of international transparency

Many international organizations institutionalize the transparency of their own practices, thus becoming advocates of transparency among their constituencies. The UN has been behind much of the drive toward greater transparency by requiring full disclosure of information from its member organizations and by requiring transparency from its member states (Emmerij, 2009). This two-pronged UN policy is particularly evident in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). By list-ing the number of missing data categories among MDG indicators, the UN ‘names and shames’ member states into adhering to its new standards of disclosure and flags any omissions as a breach of the norm of transparency (Whitworth et al., 2009).

Data compilation and publication have been among the UN’s responsibilities since its founding and related efforts have culminated in the publication of the UN Statistical Yearbook. First pub-lished in 1948, the UN Statistical Yearbook is an annual compilation of a wide range of interna-tional economic, social, and environmental statistics on member states and different regions of the world. Administered by the UN’s Statistics Division (UNSTAT), statistical data for each yearbook are gathered from member states, UN agencies, and other international, national, and specialized organizations. Recent yearbooks contain longitudinal data on more than 200 countries and territo-ries, as well as for aggregations grouped by world region and development category.

The UN Statistics Division also promotes global standards for data collection and information disclosure by devising the reporting methods, classifications, and definitions later used by the information agencies of member states (Emmerij, 2009) and by coaching member states on proper techniques of data compilation and reporting (UNSTAT, 2008). For example, the UN Statistics Division hosts meetings, workshops, and seminars and provides training for improving data collec-tion and dissemination. In this way, the UN serves as both a site of transparency and as a teacher of the norm of transparency.

Despite the UN’s persistent efforts to improve the completeness of its reporting, many tables in the Statistical Yearbooks consist of blank cells, indicating that data reports were not submit-ted or that such data were unavailable. We compiled data on these missing data reports in the UN Statistical Yearbook, seeing these as a form of failure to disclose information. We assigned a national transparency score based on the number of blank cells in a sample of tables of national accounts. To trace historical changes in national transparency, we compiled such data at four time points: 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. The total number of blank cells for each coun-try at each time point, which serves as a dependent variable in subsequent analyses, creates a scale for national transparency: a lower value for this indicator means a higher level of national transparency.4

We observed two interesting patterns in the distribution of this indicator of national transpar-ency. (1) We found an overall trend toward greater transparency worldwide, signified by an overall increase in the number of data reported and an overall decline in the number of blank cells in data tables. (2) We also found that while countries vary greatly in terms of transparency scores, there has been an overall decrease in the variation among national scores.

Figure 1 depicts the total number of blank cells per country and the mean for each of the four time points. We observed first that the mean number of blank cells per year dramatically decreased



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over time from 114.8 in 1970 to 31.56 in 2000. In fact, the national average of blank cells in the 2000 UN Statistical Yearbook is almost one-fourth that in the 1970 yearbook. Second, we observed a narrowing of the cross-national differences in transparency, as the range of cross-national differ-ences in the mean number of blank cells decreased from 149 in the 1970 UN Statistical Yearbook to 41 in the 2000 yearbook.5

Further confirmation of these two trends comes from a corresponding indicator of data transpar-ency, namely the nature of nonstandard data. Although the UN Statistics Division provides guide-lines for data submission, some countries still compile national accounts in ways that do not conform to UN guidelines. In the case of submission of nonstandard data, the UN provides the data in its yearbooks while adding a comment or note to the table explaining how the data differ from the prescribed standard. These notes and comments describe the special nature of the data, national and social conditions affecting the gathering and reporting of data, and data collection practices and classifications specific to that country.66 We compiled data on the number of comments and notes per country in a sample of tables in the UN Statistical Yearbooks of 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 (Figure 2). This count provided us with a national score for nonstandard transparency. Unlike blank cells, nonstandard reporting indicates that the capacity for data compilation is available, but that the UN norm is not being adhered to. While this indicator of nonstandard reporting is distinct from our measure of data transparency, it nevertheless confirmed the two overall trends. First, we observed that countries differed greatly in their nonstandard reporting. Second, we observed that the range of cross-national differences in the mean number of notes decreased from 100 in the 1970 UN Statistical Yearbook to 61 in the 2000 yearbook. Overall, since 1970, national governments worldwide have tended to present their accounts and statistics in accordance with international standards for national accounts data.

Developing countries trail in transparent governance of this sort. Since 1970, poor and small countries have consistently shown the highest number of blank cells in the data tables of the UN

Figure 1. National transparency: global trends 1970–2000 (137 countries).Missing cells = number of blank cells in UN Statistical Yearbooks (meaning certain cells in tables are missing data from that country for that year); Mean = mean number of blank cells across all countries for a specific year.




Statistical Yearbooks. In 1970, the 10 countries with the most non-transparent governance included 9 African countries and Saudi Arabia, and the number of blank cells for this group ranged between 160 and 181. Since 1980, the list of least transparent countries has mostly and consistently included Caribbean island nations. Yet much change is evident in the exclusive group of 10 countries that lead the world in transparent governance. In 1970, all 10 countries were Western (from Western Europe or North America), and the first non-Western country to join this ‘club’ was Japan in 1980. However, the rise in other countries’ transparency capacity has quickly pushed Western nations off the list. In 1990, South Korea led with only 18 blank cells, and the list also included Mexico, China, and India. In 2000, Mexico topped the list with only 12 blank cells, and the rest of the top-10 list was dominated by Eastern European countries (5 out of the group of 10), which were then eager to join the European Union and took pains to demonstrate appropriate governance. These details also confirm the trend of overall convergence toward transparent governance. Both developed and developing countries decreased their num-bers of blank cells over time, indicating greater transparency. Both the best and worst scores showed dramatic and consistent reductions between 1970 and 2000; the score dropped from 59 in 1970 to 12 in 2000 for the country leading in transparent governance and from 181 to 53 for the worst country in terms of transparency. The lowest scores (most transparent) during the whole period were in 2000, and the highest scores (least transparent) were in 1970, further dem-onstrating the historical trend.7

In summary, we found that countries worldwide provided national accounts on an expanding range of issues and with a greater degree of comprehensiveness over time. In the remainder of this article, we analyze the reasons for this trend, considering national transparency as an outcome of a series of national features, including, in particular, economic and political imperatives as well as global embeddedness.

Figure 2. Standardization of data reporting: global trends 1970–2000 (137 countries).Total number of notes = number of notes added to data tables in UN Statistical Yearbooks for each country in each year.



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Determinants of national transparency

Modernization

Common functional explanations suggest that the complexity of modern systems requires that the management, control, and governance of the systems be modernized, rationalized, and differenti-ated to enhance capacity and efficiency (Kerr et al., 1960). Transparency in developed countries with complex social systems is often internally driven (Saxena, 2005). More industrialized coun-tries have the capacity to make their systems more transparent, having more highly educated citi-zens who request more advanced institutions of transparency. Regardless of external pressures, developed countries can improve the responsiveness of national governance and ensure a closer correspondence between the quantity, composition, and quality of publicly provided goods and services and the preferences of recipients (Ter-Minassian, 1997). General level of education is an indicator of modernization and, because more educated citizens generally demand more transpar-ency of their institutions, of transparency. A large body of domestic and international evidence points to the role of rising education in improving social quality, decreasing corruption, and lower-ing poverty and gender bias (e.g. Subbarao and Raney, 1995).

In addition to industrialization and general education, the science education of a country plays a key role in its modernization (Schofer, 1999). Not only does science education develop practical knowledge and help modernize traditional practices, it also upgrades skills and techniques relevant to data management. Consequently, modernization in general has a positive effect on the likelihood of transparency and accountability; the more complex the social systems are, the more transpar-ency is required of national systems and the more accurate the information needs to be for their efficient operation. This leads to Hypothesis 1:

H1. More modernized and developed countries are more likely to be transparent.

National polity

Variations in national polity lead to differences in social rationalization and, therefore, in accounting (Jang, 2005). Liberal, individualist countries advocate the construction of individual sovereign rationality instead of legal and social controls, whereas statist and communist coun-tries promote the central government as a locus of rationality and state-oriented projects (Mauro, 1998). Financial accounting during the Soviet era was conceived as a form of state-led inspec-tion; known as reviziya, this system was related to central planning and the command and control apparatus of the Soviet state (Mennicken, 2010). Communist governments often sought to shield important information from both domestic and international audiences, regarding the security and secrecy of the national system as an important asset of the state (Amstutz, 2005). Soviet-bloc countries’ move toward a Western form of accounting and transparency was a gradual process, starting in the mid-1980s; it was linked to other reforms under the Gorbachev-led Perestroika (literally ‘restructuring’) (Mennicken, 2010). Indeed, only in 1987 did communist nations begin to report private credit to the IMF from 1989 and 1991 (Djankov et al., 2005). During these nations’ transition toward market economies, foreign direct investment (FDI) was much in demand, and there was a need to boost the confidence of foreign investors in the local market. In these circumstances, transparency was understood to be particularly important for facilitating development and attracting foreign investment (Fabry and Zeghni, 2005; Rodrik and Subramanian, 2003). This move toward marketization and openness made Western-style audit-ing in post-communist countries a booming sector, as former communist states began to report




their national accounts to the world society to publicize themselves as attractive markets for investment.

Beyond the strategic importance of transparent governance, democratic tendencies in general encourage greater transparency (Rose and Haerpfer, 1995). Specifically, democracy allows free-dom of the press (Grigorescu, 2003) and empowers citizens to pursue the ‘public’s right to know’ (Blanton, 2002). Hungary’s information disclosure law, for example, was introduced after persis-tent pressure by the nongovernmental ‘Open Society’ organization. As in Hungary, most former communist countries adopted disclosure measures as newly democratized members of interna-tional communities, such as the European Union. Thus, we propose that national polity type accounts for varying levels of transparency:

H2-a. Democratic countries are more likely to be transparent than less democratized and statist countries.H2-b. Former communist countries are more likely to be transparent than other more stable countries that have not experienced the transition from communist to democratic polity.

Linkage to world society

Global economic integration has positive effects on national economic growth (Ades and Glaeser, 1999; Sachs and Warner, 1995). In particular, countries that liberalize their trade regimes increase the size of the domestic market, and the size of this market influences productivity. In fact, the liberalization of international trade has often had a positive effect on domestic economic growth (Billmeier and Nannicini, 2007), although the benefits extend beyond economic development. Openness to the global economy reduces domestic income inequality (Reuveny and Li, 2003) and increases state stability (Bremmer, 2006). More economically open countries, which are often wealthier and more integrated in global society, can afford to collect national data and conse-quently are more likely to be transparent and accountable. In addition, countries actively involved in international trade are often requested or pressured by their trade partners to provide more detailed economic and business information.

Aid-dependent countries are particularly under pressure to comply with international transpar-ency norms. While dependence on international aid is often criticized for increasing the recipient’s national debt (Bauer, 1957), donors require governance reforms as a prerequisite for any financial transactions. In such cases, conditional terms for the receipt of aid serve as a means of coercive dissemination of transparency practices, making aid-dependent countries particularly susceptible to international pressure toward transparent disclosure of information. With such normative or coercive pressures being brought to bear by international agencies, the number of international agencies operating within a country or alongside its government affects local institutional compli-ance with international norms.

On the one hand, the relationship between a given country’s linkage to world society and national transparency is direct and procedural: political openness accounts for greater transpar-ency, because civil society in open countries can request access to undisclosed information from the state. From an institutional perspective, on the other hand, the principal effect of openness is indirect and cultural in nature: the world society’s advocating for increased transparency in a coun-try as a global norm (Meyer et al., 1997). Embeddedness in world society can be indicated by organizational connections, such as the number of memberships of a country in international gov-ernmental and nongovernmental organizations. Countries with a greater number of organizational connections to world society are more likely to observe the norms of world society (Boli and Thomas, 1997, 1999). International governmental organizations formulate rules and guidelines for



Jang et al. 11

the gathering and reporting of data and encourage countries to provide a wide range of national measures. The UN Statistics Division, for example, creates rules for national data reporting and periodically publishes guidelines. Since 1955, it has published detailed guidelines for particular sets of data, as well as general rules in the Directory of International Standards for Statistics. As a consequence, we predict the following:

H3. Countries more embedded in world society are more likely to be transparent than are coun-tries less embedded.

Global trends and changing mechanisms

As noted earlier, the logic dominating transparency initiatives has shifted from a functional to a cultural rationale. In the past, only when effectiveness of data reporting was guaranteed did coun-tries release information. Recently, however, active information disclosure has become the world-wide norm, and nation-states feel obligated, even pressured, to commit to this new global regime of transparency. This change in the nature of causal factors corresponds with the phases of global institutionalization and reflects the adoption of global transparency practices in distinct groups of countries. As confirmed in other studies of global diffusion and institutionalization (e.g. Jang, 2000), functional forces drive institutionalization in ‘early adopters’, which are developed coun-tries, whereas cultural forces drive institutionalization in ‘late arrivals’, which are developing countries. Hence, the following hypothesis:

H4. Countries are more likely to become transparent as the norm of transparency is globally institutionalized over time.

We also expect to observe changing mechanisms that increase national transparency over time. During the earlier period considered in our study (i.e. before the 1990s), the extent of national transparency was an outcome of modernization, as developed countries with greater capacity for gathering and reporting data were more likely to provide national accounts. In the 1970s and 1980s, the format of data release was less standardized than subsequently, and transparency itself was less institutionalized. Hence, nation-states were expected to use technical notes and comments in place of missing information in their reports. In the 1990s and 2000s, in contrast, countries more embedded in international society were expected to be accountable in their data reporting. Given that the norm of transparency was upheld through various networks of international communities, countries were able to learn about the notion of transparency more easily when engaged with inter-national society. The national level of democracy became more crucial indicator than the level of economic development in predicting increased national transparency later in the process. More democratic and former communist countries are more sensitive to the global norm of transparency and are thus more likely to be accountable and transparent themselves.

H5. The positive effects of internal modernization on national transparency decrease relative to the effects of internal political and international factors as the norm of transparency is globally institutionalized over time.

Variables and modeling

National transparency, the dependent variable in our analyses, is defined as the extent to which a country provides international agencies with national statistics. For our purposes, it is indicated by




the total number of blank cells in each country’s reports in the UN Statistical Yearbooks of 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. The data were carefully screened for duplication and redundancy; repeated cases of blank cells were collapsed and regarded as continual failures of transparent reporting, and no summary tables (typically including world or regional data) were included. The final sample included 470 observations from 543 tables. We sought to determine which factors explain the vary-ing degrees of national data transparency. Hypothesis 1, focusing on the impact of national devel-opment and modernization on national transparency, is considered in both economic and human capital terms. National economic development is indicated by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in constant US dollars; these data were logged and standardized with the year 2000 serving as the reference year (Development Data Group , 2008).8 Second, considering that national higher and science education affect the rationalization of national governance (Drori et al., 2006a), while enhancing the national capacity to compile national statistics, data on gross secondary education of both male and female students were used as indicators of modernization.

Hypothesis 2, focusing on the impact of national polity type, was assessed using two measures. First, we included a cross-national index of political democracy, as compiled in the Polity IV data-base.9 The initial Polity Project coded the characteristics of authority in all countries in the world, and the most recent project uses data from 1880 through 2007. Its democracy index ranges from 0 (‘not democratic’) to 10 (‘highly democratic’). Second, drawing on data from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Factbook (2010), we included a dummy variable representing communism.10

Hypothesis 3, focusing on embeddedness in global society, is assessed in terms of both econ-omy and culture. First, global economic embeddedness, or integration into the world economy, is indicated by a measure of the openness of trade. This measure calculates the exports and imports of goods and services as a percentage of a country’s GDP using data drawn from Penn World Table (2003) version 6.2.11 In addition, seeing that aid recipients are particularly dependent on external guidelines, we included a measure of economic dependency on other countries. Dependency is indicated by a dummy variable for official development aid (ODA) recipients and is based on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) records.12 Recipients of development aid are burdened with the responsibility of following external guidelines and thus are subjected to more normative pressure than any other globally embedded country, even more so than countries engaged in bi-lateral trade relations. In this sense, recipients of development aid are subject to direct pressure to conform to international norms of transparency.

As a second measure of embeddedness in global society, we add an empirical gauge for interna-tional organizational connections to highlight the particular role of such organizations and their experts in the expansion of the transparency norm. Once a country is embedded in the world soci-ety and actively participates in the activities of international organizations, it is less likely to pro-vide incomplete data. To gauge the proactive integration of individual countries into world society, we rely on the number of International Governmental Organization (IGO) memberships of a coun-try. All international organizations exert pressure on member states, yet IGOs, having more lever-age on member states than International Nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), are relatively strong channels for the transference of standardized transparency methods. For example, IGOs such as the World Bank or IMF rely on conditional terms to require countries to become more transparent. In addition, seeing that the INGO field is larger and more diffuse, we found member-ship data for IGOs to be more readily available and more reliable. We therefore define a country’s embeddedness in world society as its total number of IGO memberships, as listed in the COW-2 International Organizations Dataset Version 2.0 (Cole, 2005; Pevehouse et al., 2004).

Hypotheses 4 and 5, each focusing on a unique dimension of historical change in national trans-parency, are addressed by period dummy variables to take account of changing effects in different



Jang et al. 13

decades. Specifically, we distinguished between the most recent period (the 1990s and 2000s, coded 1) and the earlier period (the 1970s and 1980s, coded 0). In this way, we are able to estimate longitudinal changes in factors affecting the level of transparency.

Control variables

As mentioned earlier, when a country reports its national statistics to the UN, it often adds explana-tory comments to the cells in which the collection and processing of the information reported does not follow the prescribed guidelines. Notes and comments describe the special nature of the data, the national and social conditions affecting data gathering and reporting, and data collection prac-tices and classifications specific to that country. These conditions usually produce unique data formatting and content.

The number of notes and comments, therefore, indicates the degree to which a country’s reports deviate from the standards and principles suggested by the UN. While there has been a continuous decrease in this indicator of national reporting, we added a control variable for the total number of notes.

Modeling

We evaluate national characteristics that shape cross-national and historical variations in adherence to the global trend of increasing transparency. To capture variations across countries and over time, data are a combination of both cross-sectional information and a ‘pooled time series’. Data were collected on 137 nation-states at 10-year intervals between 1970 and 2000. After deleting cases that lacked appropriate information, the analyses were conducted on a total of 470 observations. The primary advantage of combining cross-sections and time series was to capture variation across dif-ferent countries as well as over time.

Because the dependent variable – the total number of blank cells in each country’s reports – includes the count data, we used a negative binominal regression model (NBRM). This type of modeling corrects for over-dispersion (where the variance is greater than the mean), which would otherwise be misestimated by traditional ordinary least squares (OLS) or Poisson modeling (Long, 1997). The NBRM allows the variance to exceed the mean and accommodates this excess over the dispersion by adding a stochastic component to the model (Land et al., 1996). This model calcu-lates coefficient estimates through the maximum likelihood method. The NBRM equation can be written as a log-linear model as follows

lnYi i= +X iβ ε

In this equation, lnYi denotes the natural logarithm of the expected value of the dependent variable, Xi denotes a matrix of covariates, and β represents the regression coefficients for this model. The inclusion of the error term εi allows for unexplained randomness in lnYi. Coefficients in the nega-tive binomial regression are interpreted to be the difference between the logs of expected counts (Long, 1997).

Findings

Table 1 presents the negative binominal estimation results for the number of blank cells in the UN Statistical Yearbooks since the 1970s.



14 International Journal of Comparative Sociology T

able

1.

Effe

cts

of d

omes

tic a

nd in

tern

atio

nal f

acto

rs o

n na

tiona

l tra

nspa

renc

y.

Con

cept

sIn

dica

tors

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 3

Mod

el 4

Ea

rly

peri

od

(bef

ore

1990

)La

te p

erio

d (s

ince

199

0)

Co

ntro

l var

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ota

l num

ber

of n

ote

−0.0

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GD

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760)

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+

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(0.0

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−0.

0102

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.



Jang et al. 15

Model 1 assessed the effects of national and international as well as political and economic fac-tors on national transparency scores for the full period of 1970–2000. The control variable, the total number of notes, revealed that countries have reduced the number of blanks using an unstandard-ized reporting format. More developed and educated countries are more likely to report national accounts. In general, countries with more modernized systems of governance can collect and report data more accurately, implying that transparency is motivated by efficiency (Hypothesis 1).

Hypotheses 2a and 2b, which consider the effects of national polity type on transparency, are also borne out by the statistical analysis. As we predicted, more democratic countries are more likely to be transparent than less democratic countries. Empowered citizens in a democratic society request public rights to information held by their government. In this regard, public access to infor-mation is part of the system of social justice based on respect for essential human rights. Hence, countries that have been more democratized must develop procedures for releasing national accounts, and the information must be accessible to both domestic and international audiences. Hypothesis 2b is also supported in that former communist countries are more likely to report national data. This is congruent with research on the transition of post-communist countries from planned economies to market economies, when they relinquish old strategies of opaqueness in data reporting (Rodrik and Subramanian, 2003) and create more reliable market institutions so as to attract foreign investment (Fabry and Zeghni, 2005). Moreover, post-communist countries move from authoritarian to democratic societies and consequently face growing internal demand for the disclosure of information. As a result, both marketization and democratization can trigger com-plete data reporting by post-communist countries.

Among the international linkage variables, economic openness to international trade is nega-tively associated with transparent data reporting. As openness to trade is an important proxy for proactive national behavior to become involved in the global economy, this counterintuitive result requires further investigation. To test the effect of international economic ties on transparency in more detail, we conducted analyses of both the plain and square terms of this openness variable. The findings suggest that the relation between trade openness and national transparency is curvi-linear; a medium level of trade openness is negatively associated with transparent data reporting, whereas there is a positive relationship between a high (and, to a lesser degree, a low) level of economic integration and transparent reporting. The countries with a medium or below-medium level of trade openness are more likely to withhold information. In contrast, the countries with a high level of trade openness are more likely to report information as active participants in the global economy.13 In other words, mid-level trade ties do not appear to influence the absorption of transnational norms of transparency.14 This finding implies that the mere presence of international economic ties does not guarantee full data reporting; rather, the extent of economic openness is a key to predicting the transparency of governments.15 IGO membership, on the other hand, demon-strates a significant linear effect on reducing the number of blank cells, where data go unreported. This finding suggests that cultural embeddedness in global society is a primary mechanism for learning guidelines for data reporting, and this encourages transparency rather than economic embeddedness. Hence, Hypothesis 3 is confirmed overall.

In addition to the effects of proactive integration into the global transparency norms, less volun-tary ODA recipients are likely to be accountable, but the effect of receiving international aid is not statistically significant. The period variable shows a negative and statistically significant effect, suggesting that countries become more transparent in the later period as the norm of national trans-parency become widely institutionalized (Hypothesis 4).16

To test Hypothesis 5, we divided our sample into two periods (Model 2). During the first period (before 1990), mechanisms to predict higher information disclosure were governed mainly by economic development. As explained earlier, developed countries possess the financial and




administrative capacity to assemble and report national data in standard formats. At the same time, the results suggest that trade openness does not guarantee an increase in national transparency. These results imply that during the early period, a minimum level of economic development is required before a country benefits from an outward-oriented economy (Billmeier and Nannicini, 2007) and from the spill-over effect of such openness on increasing human capital (Harrison, 1996). Given that general level of education has no effect on transparency and that ODA recipients are likely to fail to report information, efforts to achieve transparent data reporting through eco-nomic openness are likely in vain when a country is underdeveloped and lacks educated citizens.

During the second period (since 1990), a different pattern appeared for both the modernization and national polity type variables. Whereas transparency in the first period was generated by domestic economic development, economic conditions appear to influence transparent data report-ing less in the later period. This result suggests the possibility of a marginal adverse effect of eco-nomic growth. This may also be a result of the divergence of statehood. Fully developed countries, asserting their autonomy, tend not to follow global norms. As imperfect data reporting is not seen as a serious crime, some countries argue for the supremacy of their national interests of security and protectionism. Interestingly, the effect of education becomes significant in the later period. Also, national political factors – a country’s level of democracy and the transition of post-communist countries – are more likely to prompt the disclosure of information. These findings confirm the results of prior research on the transformation of transitional societies toward the prevalent model of governance (democracy) and political openness (Fabry and Zeghni, 2005). For instance, eastern European countries have become transparent in their efforts to meet the requirements for foreign investment and the EU standards of human rights and democracy (Access Info Europe, 2006).

The effects of cultural embeddedness in the international society are significant in all models. Nation-states that are more deeply embedded in networks of international governmental organiza-tions are more likely to report data and make information more accessible. Moreover, a greater number of memberships in international governmental organizations had a slightly stronger effect on national transparency during the later period, suggesting that these kinds of ties have an effect distinct from the effects of modernization. Thus, Hypothesis 5, which predicts a historical shift in the mechanisms of transparent reporting and distinguishes between ‘early adopters’ of a global norm and ‘late arrivals’, is supported.

For the purpose of validity checks, we tested the same arguments with the same models, while including only the variable of INGO memberships and dropping the variable of IGO memberships (Model 3). In a separate model, we also examined the effect of INGO membership residuals along with IGO memberships (Model 4).17 These analyses confirm that IGO membership has a stronger effect on increasing national transparency than does INGO membership. Because there is a signifi-cant difference between the ranges of both variables, it is more appropriate to compare the likeli-hood of non-missing reports by interpreting the impact of the mean values of each variable. The result indicates that the expected ratio of non-missing reports is 69.9 percent higher for the mean value of IGO memberships than that of INGOs.18 The ratio (71.33%), produced by comparing the expected ratios when the values increase by one standard deviation, implies that the gap between the influences of IGO and INGO on national transparency widens as nation-states participate in more international organizations. As we expected, IGO memberships have a stronger impact on national transparency. Membership in INGOs does still have an effect on the likelihood of non-missing reports, although it is less influential than the effect of IGO membership. The residual vari-ation of INGO membership (Model 4) has a significant and positive impact on national transparency, even after including the variable of IGO membership.

In summary, we find that national transparency is prevalent in countries that are (a) more devel-oped or modernized, (b) more democratic rather than communist, and (c) more culturally



Jang et al. 17

embedded in world society, and we find that transparency is expanding, particularly after 1990 (Model 1). Furthermore, the causal mechanisms influencing the worldwide trend toward national transparency in the period after 1990 (Model 2) were different from the mechanisms before 1990. Until the 1990s, domestic economic factors affected national transparency most, whereas political factors have become more significant since that time. Finally, we find that cultural embeddedness in world society, although exerting a stronger impact on national transparency after 1990, is a sig-nificant determinant in both periods. These findings confirm the effect of international pressure on the worldwide trend toward greater national transparency.19

Concluding remarks: Global trends in national transparency

Public disclosure of information, the bedrock of transparency, has emerged as a common and standard practice worldwide. Even prior to WikiLeaks’ and Edward Snowden’s exposure of secret US government documents in 2010 and 2012, countries of various capacities and cultures had begun to publicly report more information, and they continue to do so in globally standardized or legitimized formats. Our research shows that national economic development and a high level of openness to international trade positively affect the reduction of unreported information, while mid-level openness to trade negatively affects transparent data reporting. Post-communist coun-tries are more willing to publish national accounts, and democracy and embeddedness in global culture promote the transfer of knowledge and ideas about transparency.

On the basis of these findings, we argue that international as well as domestic factors contribute to the trend of increasing national transparency. National transparency is associated with broader global trends of rationalization, and specifically with changes toward a rationalized mode of gov-ernance (Drori et al., 2006a) that combines transparency and accountability in a new model of governance (Drori, 2006). Prior to the 1990s and the consolidation of this new mode of transparent governance, when the emphasis was on the functional roles of information disclosure, societies with greater development voluntarily disclosed national data. In the more recent period, during which the global model of transparency has become institutionalized, countries that are more democratized and more embedded have become more likely to report national data. Thus, we can trace a global shift in the institutional logic of national transparency from functional to cultural.

The global model of transparency, enthusiastically advocated by many powerful global players, spreads due to the legitimacy conferred by universalism and the authority of professionals who adhere to universalized and scientized models of policy and practice. The universalized and scien-tized policy model of transparency specifies the benefits of this governance strategy; the policy is articulated in numerous manuals on data compilation and dissemination, which thus provide an increasingly standardized format for what transparency is and how it is to be implemented. Hence, transparency emerges as a transnational norm, outlining the desired features of proper national and international actors; deviations from this norm are exposed and violators sanctioned. In this way, transparency guidelines serve as ‘soft laws’, exerting mimetic and normative pressure on nation-states that engage in global society. The result of these pressures is massive cross-national isomor-phism: transparency comes to be defined and implemented in a similar way cross-nationally, regardless of unique national histories, political cultures, or economic conditions. Moreover, as is the case in other ceremonial enactments of policy, the loose coupling between policy and practice is a related outcome.

Our investigation of the forces that govern the cross-national diffusion of the transparency model opens up possibilities for further research. Our study focuses on the antecedents of national transparency; further study of the outcomes of this process from an institutionalist perspective would be worthwhile. Current studies on the effects of transparency assume outcomes such as




foreign investment, growth, and civic engagement. However, if indeed the institutionalization and globalization of transparency are essentially ceremonial enactments of a global norm, then the outcomes may reflect this ‘irrationality of rationality’ and manifest themselves in a dramatic decoupling of policy and practice. Further research is also possible on the mechanisms of diffusion of transparency norms. In addition, although it is widely accepted that international organizations serve as the main conduits for the global diffusion of policy models, there is little understanding of the intra-organizational mechanisms that construct such policy norms and are responsible for their diffusion. Distinguishing between various economic and political sectors of world society, either generally or those directly related to transparency, would lead to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of policy diffusion and may help to reveal the complexity of the world polity and its impact on the global norm of transparency.

Acknowledgements

We received valuable comments and suggestions from John W. Meyer, Francisco Ramirez, members of the Comparative Workshop at Stanford University, and participants in our presentations of this work at Hanken School of Economics, Uppsala University, and the 2009 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2011-330-B00194).

Notes

1. For instance, Gross National Product (GNP), educational outcomes, and data on violations of human rights (see Schofer and McEneaney, 2003).

2. Several early Western practices are noted as planting the seeds of modern transparency. Specifically, democratic oversight of Athenian public officials and rules in Magna Carta about disclosure of taxation and royal expenditure embody the modern association of oversight and legitimacy, and hence transpar-ency and accountability.

3. In 2001, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) replaced the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC).

4. Considering the changes in the number of tables and of pages across these four United Nations (UN) Statistical Yearbooks (see Appendix 1), the score is calculated per the volume of each yearbook.

5. Countries had between 32 and 181 blank cells in the 1970 yearbook and between 12 and 52 in the 2000 yearbook.

6. For instance, when Morocco and Barbados reported their statistics on education in 1990, the yearbook included notes to indicate that reported enrollments referred only to public schools.

7. These data are reported for 137 country cases. 8. To further gauge the impact of national wealth on transparency, we also added dummy variables of

membership in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to the analyses. Whereas membership in OECD showed a positive relationship with national transparency, membership in OPEC did not have a significant rela-tionship. While these findings illuminate the importance of wealth as a powerful engine of autonomy, we do not report these analyses in detail for fear that they would lead to over-estimation of the impact of economic factors on transparency.

9. http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm (accessed 8 October 2007).10. Current communist countries, such as Cuba and North Korea, are not included in the final sample of

countries because of absence of relevant data on the independent variables.11. http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt_index.php (accessed 9 February 2008).



Jang et al. 19

12. http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/historyofdaclistsofaidrecipientcountries.htm (accessed 23 August 2010).13. The result shows that a higher level of economic integration has a positive influence on national transpar-

ency after the points of inflection that are all within the actual range of data.14. The inflection points have decreased over time as the countries become more dependent on the global

economy. This is especially true after the 1990s, when economic globalization expanded rapidly. The inflection point of trade openness during the earlier period was 193.1 percent, but it decreased after the 1990s to 122.8 percent.

15. We confirmed this finding by replacing the variable of trade openness with a measure of foreign direct investment (FDI). The effect on transparency was similar; we found that FDI (as a share of total GNP) was negatively associated with national transparency, but the square term was not statistically significant when we excluded the variable of trade openness in the original model. Foreign direct investment had no significant effect on national transparency in the model including both the variables of trade openness and foreign direct investment, although trade openness and its square term still had significant influence. However, it was hard to directly compare the effect of both variables because of the substantial decrease in the sample size of the model that included foreign direct investment.

16. Considering the impact of the 2011 Enron scandal on the drafting of the 2012 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it is reasonable to wonder about the possible role of global financial crises in spurring transparency initia-tives (Arnold, 2009). Indeed, several financial crises were global in scope (e.g. the 1997 Asian crisis had more of a global reach than the 1994 Mexican economic crisis or the Swedish and Finnish banking crises of the 1990s). Still, the correspondence of the timing of such crises with other historical shifts toward global governance norms challenges us to see such internationally cascading events as the prime factor in driving the processes observed here. To test whether specific historical events such as financial crises had significant influences on national transparency, we included a dummy variable that is coded as 1 if a country experienced an economic crisis. We found that countries were less likely to report national information after they experienced crises. This result was marginally significant (p < .1).

17. Due to the high correlation between International Governmental Organization (IGO) and International Nongovernmental Organization (INGO) membership variables (pairwise correlation coefficient: .81), the model including both variables did not show significant effects of integration in global society on national transparency. We therefore tested alternative models to resolve this multicollinearity problem. We included each variable in separate models (Model 1 and Model 3), and also ran a model to include a residual variable of INGO memberships, which was calculated for each year by regressing the INGO membership variable on the IGO membership variable. In this way, we found that the variable of INGO residuals has a significant effect on promoting national transparency (Model 4). As independent vari-ables and the residuals are, by definition, mutually exclusive (i.e. Ciesel and Carroll, 1980), the variables of IGO memberships and INGO membership residuals are mutually exclusive and represent the whole variance of both variables with no overlap between them.

18. The ratio was calculated by comparing exponentials for the product of the means and the coefficients of IGO and INGO memberships.

19. To provide additional information on causal relationships, we re-ran the ordinary least squares (OLS) models for a recoded dependent variable of percentage of non-blank cells and obtained results similar to those of the negative binominal regression model (NBRM) models, which used numerical dependent variables of the blank cells. There were a few marginal changes in statistical significance, with small changes in signs for the main independent variables in the OLS models (see Appendix 2).

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Appendix 1

Summary of coded information from UN Statistical Yearbooks (number of tables coded).

Category coded Number of tables coded

1970 1980 1990 2000

Demographics (population) 4 2 2 1National economic activity 107 104 50 38(labor force; industrial production; manufacturing, construction; energy; internal trade; transport; consumption; balance of payments; wages and prices; national accounts; finance; industrial property; government finance; intellectual property)

Resources 53 49 30 11(land; agriculture; forestry; fishing; hunting; mining; environment and land use)

International economic activity 7 10 12 11(trade; international finance; development assistance; international tourism)

Welfare 4 2 10 4(education; health; housing) Local social life 11 6 11 4(communications; culture; science and technology) Total coded 186 173 115 69Total number of pages 841 891 1109 889

UN: United Nations.




Appendix 2

Effects of domestic and international factors on national transparency (OLS regressions with percentage of non-blank cells as dependent variable).

Concepts Indicators Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Early period (before 1990)

Late period (since 1990)

Control variable

Total number of notes

0.0005*** (0.0001)

0.0005*** (0.0001)

0.0001 (0.0001)

0.0006*** (0.0001)

0.0006*** (0.0001)

Modernization

GDP per capita

0.0035** (0.0013)

0.0080** (0.0021)

−0.0019+ (0.0010)

0.0045** (0.0015)

0.0038** (0.0014)

Education 0.0001 (0.0001)

0.0001+ (0.0001)

0.0002*** (0.0000)

0.0002** (0.0001)

0.0001+ (0.0001)

National polity

Former communist

0.0111** (0.0040)

0.0143* (0.0073)

0.0108*** (0.0026)

0.0022 (0.0044)

0.0114** (0.0040)

Democracy 0.0002 (0.0003)

−0.0006+ (0.0004)

0.0007*** (0.0002)

0.0001 (0.0003)

0.0002 (0.0003)

International effect

Openness −0.0233*** (0.0069)

−0.0245** (0.0084)

−0.0174** (0.0054)

−0.0252** (0.0077)

−0.0233*** (0.0069)

Openness square

0.0046 (0.0030)

0.0057+ (0.0034)

0.0063** (0.0024)

0.0032 (0.0034)

0.0045 (0.0030)

IGO membership

0.0007*** (0.0001)

0.0015*** (0.0001)

0.0005*** (0.0000)

0.0006*** (0.0001)

INGO – −0.00003 (0.00002)

INGO residual

– −0.00005 (0.00004)

ODA recipient

0.0031 (0.0038)

0.0045 (0.0065)

0.0081** (0.0026)

−0.0098* (0.0044)

0.0015 (0.0040)

Period effect (after 1990)

0.0755*** (0.0028)

– 0.0912*** (0.0030)

0.0763*** (0.0029)

Constant 0.8023*** (0.0110)

0.7366*** (0.0176)

0.9245*** (0.0082)

0.8316*** (0.0119)

0.8021*** (0.0110)

Observations 421 188 233 421 421R-square 0.846 0.807 0.619 0.814 0.846

OLS: ordinary least squares; GDP: gross domestic product; IGO: International Governmental organization; INGO: International Nongovernmental organizations; ODA: official development aid.+p < .1; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.



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