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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
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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)
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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)
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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.
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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.
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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)
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
Analisi preliminare
A preliminary analysis of the linkage between average country-level external political efficacy and government transparency supports our hypotheses
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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
Elina De Simone, DISAE, Università Parthenope
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”
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