Transparency's impact on the professionalization of government

Abstract

Freedom of information (FOI) laws are known to expose governmental weaknesses, but do they improve the structural workings of public administration, professionalizing governance? This study examines FOI's effect on a cornerstone of effective governance—bureaucratic hiring. Using coarsened matching methods to compare over 5400 municipalities in Brazil—approximately half possessing FOI regulations and half without—we identify significant reductions in discretionary patronage-based appointments. Municipalities with FOI regulations reduce both higher level “political control” and lower-level “electoral rewards” hires. Our explanation, tentatively supported by a comparison of early versus late FOI adopters, centers on sequencing: in the short term, leaders view FOI as a supplement to administrative control and thus reduce higher-level hires. As FOI becomes more institutionalized and exposures more probable, leaders reduce lower-level hires. Contributing to scholarship on transparency and bureaucracies, our results enjoin policymakers to double-down on commitments to FOI policies.