Trasparenza e fiducia nelle istituzioni, partecipazione e democrazia digitale

Firma convenzione

Politecnico di Milano e Veneranda Fabbrica

del Duomo di Milano

Aula Magna – Rettorato

Mercoledì 27 maggio 2015

Trasparenza e fiducia nelle istituzioni, partecipazione e democrazia digitale

Webinar “La trasparenza dei finanziamenti pubblici nell’era

dell’ICT: una sfida aperta”

Elina De Simone, Università degli Studi di Napoli Parthenope

16 luglio 2015

Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope

Outline

• Fornire un breve quadro introduttivo sul legame tra trasparenza e

political attitudes (fiducia/soddisfazione/affidamento/efficacia)

• Illustrare un caso particolare di political attitudes, ossia l’efficacia

politica esterna e capire come la trasparenza incida su di essa

• Presentare dati, metodologia e risultati di un lavoro empirico

• Illustrare le conclusioni ed enfatizzare alcune raccomandazioni di

policy per migliorare il legame tra governance e partecipazione

democratica


Quadro introduttivo

Political efficacy, like trust and participation serves to link individuals with the political institutions that represent them

Political activities are affected by agency problems =>information asymmetry and disparity between governors and citizenry (Stiglitz, 2002)

Unresponsiveness of government and citizens feeling of powerless/sense of inefficacy=>erosion of citizen-state relationship=> significant implications for the legitimacy of government and the stability of political institutions (Denemark and Niemi, 2012)

Disclosure of information about government activities affects public sector agency problems (Alt and Lassen, 2006)

Information is a key determinant of public opinion and citizen behavior as it influences attitudes/dispositions (Im et al., 2012)

Citizens’ positive experience with information sources is likely to contribute to citizens’ political decision making and participation (Pinkleton and Austin, 2001)


Caso studio: trasparenza ed efficacia politica

esterna

Lavoro di riferimento: Lost in transparency? The interaction between individual education

and government transparency in explaining citizens’ external political efficacy di Cicatiello

L., De Simone E e Gaeta G.L. (2015)

Political efficacy is the "feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an

impact upon the political process, i.e., that it is worthwhile to perform one's civic duties"

(Campbell, Gurin and Miller, 1954)

This concept has been further split into (Craig and Maggiotto, 1982; Morrell, 2003; Parent

et al., 2005):

• Internal political efficacy: individual perception about one’s own competence to influence and

have an impact on political developments

• External political efficacy: individual perception about political institutions’ responsiveness to

citizen’s action

Internal relies more on individual skills and competences (Almond and Verba, 1963)

External is more system-focused (Converse, 1972; Abramson and Aldrich,1982)


Ipotesi 1

Transparency is “the availability of, and feasibility for actors both internal and external to

state operations to access and disseminate information relevant to evaluating institutions”

(Bauhr and Grimes, 2012)

Information disclosure eases observability of government by citizens => “clarity of

responsibility” (Powell and Whitten, 1993)

Among benefits of transparency, there is the positive effect on public perceptions of

political decisions and decision makers (Heald 2006; Roberts 2006).

Release of information and public scrutiny=>the public can feel its ability to influence a

policy decision

Hypothesis 1: Better government transparency enhances citizens’ external political

efficacy.


Ipotesi 2

“For transparency to be effective, there must be receptors capable of processing,

digesting, and using the information” (Heald, 2006)

Citizens’ awareness and ability are mostly unobservable, however “formal education is

expected to give citizens resources and skills that help them negotiate the political world”

(Bowler and Donovan, 2002)

Education may shape the effect of transparency on citizens’ external political efficacy

Hypothesis 2: Individual level of education moderates the effect of government

transparency on citizens’ external political efficacy.


Dati

Dependent variable is the answer to the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP),

citizenship module (2004) question: “I don’t think the government cares much what people

like me think” (labeled EXTERNAL. Range: 1-5) 27 countries, 34,000 interviews to

citizens

Key explanatory variable is the level of government transparency according to the World

Economic Forum (labeled WE_GOV_TRANS. Range: 1-7)

The effect of education will be tested including the highest level of education attained by

the individuals (source: ISSP, labeled DEGREE)

Individual controls: sex, age income, marital and work status, type of community of

residence, recent political activities (ISSP 2004)

Country controls: GDP per capita (World Bank), Executive legislative relations

(Comparative Political Dataset III)


Analisi preliminare

A preliminary analysis of the linkage between average country-level external political efficacy and government transparency supports our hypotheses


Metodologia

Individual observations are nested into countries

Ignoring the clustering generally leads to incorrect estimated standard errors (Rabe-

Hesket and Skrondal, 2012)

Multilevel mixed-effects modeling allows to account for unexplained heterogeneity at the

country level while fitting the regression at the individual level

This method allows to include individual and country covariates

Proceeding with a step-by-step approach this analysis will test• Lower-level direct effects (education on external political efficacy)

• Cross-level direct effects (government transparency on external political efficacy)

• Cross-level interaction effects (moderating effect of education on the relation between transparency and external political efficacy


Modello

Model Fixed Part Random Part

Null EXTERNALij=β0j+εij β0j =β0+υ0j

Level 1 EXTERNALij=β0j+β1DEGREEij+β2 xij+εij β0j =β0+υ0j

Level 2 EXTERNALij=β0j+β1DEGREEij+β2WE_GOV_TRANSj+β3xij+ +β4Xj+εij β0j = β0+υ0j

CompleteEXTERNALij=β0j+β1j DEGREEij+β2WE_GOV_TRANSj+

+β3WE_GOV_TRANSj*DEGREEij+β4 xij+β5 Xj+εij

β0j =β0+υ0j

β1j=β1+υ1j

• Where εij is the individual error term and υ0j is the country error term (deviation from the grand mean)

The “complete model” includes a cross-level interaction between individual education and government transparency


Risultati

Null Level 1 Level 2

EXTERNAL EXTERNAL EXTERNAL

WE_GOV_TRANS

0.14*** (0.04)

DEGREE=1

0.06

(0.04)

0.00

(0.08)

DEGREE=2

0.14*** (0.04)

0.09 (0.08)

DEGREE=3

0.28***

(0.04)

0.22***

(0.08)

DEGREE=4

0.43*** (0.04)

0.36*** (0.08)

DEGREE=5

0.66***

(0.04)

0.58***

(0.08)

CONS 2.38*** (0.07)

2.23*** (0.08)

1.52*** (0.15)

var (CONS) 0.13***

(0.02)

0.10***

(0.01)

0.04***

(0.00)

var (residual) 1.22*** (0.00)

1.15*** (0.01)

1.14*** (0.01)

Individual Controls No Yes Yes Country Controls No No Yes

ICC 0.10 0.08 0.04

-2LL -52378.40 -36488.81 -36501.31 N 34434 24498 24498

DEGREE=0 No formal qualification

DEGREE=1 Lowest formal

qualification

DEGREE=2 Above lowest qualification

DEGREE=3 Higher secondary

complete

DEGREE=4 Above higher secondary

DEGREE=5 University degree

complete

Transparency has a positive impact on the perceived accountability of policy makers and bolsters citizens’ sense of control

Hypothesis 1 strongly supported


Modello completo

The average marginal effect of transparency is zero for less educated and higher for those with a higher level of schooling

The examination of the results strongly confirms hypothesis 2

Individuals’ education moderates the effect of government transparency on citizens’ external political efficacy


Conclusioni

The first contribution of this paper is empirical support to the hypothesis that transparency

increases external political efficacy.

The second contribution of this paper is that it empirically demonstrates that the positive

effect of transparency on citizens’ political efficacy varies depending on individual level of

schooling

More educated people have skills and resources that ease their access to disclosed

information and its elaboration, while citizens who did not complete higher secondary

school do not perceive any improvement in their external political efficacy by means of

improved government transparency


Raccomandazioni di policy

Transparency goes beyond mere information disclosure and has a demand-side

dimension (Forssbaeck and Oxelheim, 2014); peoples’ access and responses to

information may be different according to their cognitive capacities (Khagram et al., 2013)

The result suggest that governments should implement transparency with a user-centered

approach to circumvent the problem of unequal access to information due to intellectual

barriers

Without campaigns to improve education, disparity in the citizens’ capacity to interact with

public officials will persist, leaving less educated at the margins of the debate and “lost in

transparency”

Trasparenza e fiducia nelle istituzioni, partecipazione e democrazia digitale

Presentations & Public Speaking

Transcript of Trasparenza e fiducia nelle istituzioni, partecipazione e democrazia digitale