Suchergebnisse

This article investigates the future of Britain's Freedom of Information Act [FOIA]. It argues that the UK FOI regime faces a set of unique opportunities and challenges that may decisively impact upon the shape of FOI policy in Britain.On the one hand, the increasingly assertive FOIA appeal bodies, constant pressure from requesters, alongside the more open habits practised within the Civil Service, may serve together to 'open up' government information access. This in turn may widen and strengthen the British FOI regime.On the other hand, a series of potential obstacles may inhibit or undermine the new FOI regime. Delay and inconsistency, potential record management problems and 'gaps' within the scope of the Act, all present possible barriers to further openness. Most of all, following the two recent attempts to limit the scope of the legislation, the intentions and actions of the government will be crucial in shaping the future of FOI policy.

Not all parliaments are subject to Freedom of Information (FOI), and no one has studied what difference it makes to the working of a parliament. This article evaluates the impact of FOI on the UK Parliament by reference to its main objectives. It finds that FOI has made Westminster slightly more open and accountable; but it has not increased public understanding, participation, or trust. Westminster was already very open and other initiatives have helped increase participation. Trust was badly damaged by the MPs' expenses scandal, triggered by FOI requests. The House of Commons' hesitant response to those requests revealed problems of corporate governance.

This concluding chapter reflects on how the LCI has performed and how it can be developed. Application of the LCI is analyzed across different leadership puzzles and contexts and for what this tells us about the authority of political leaders. Some interpretations of capital fluctuation across the chapters are presented. The LCI allows exploration of how skills, relations, and reputations create, build, or erode authority. Questions remain over the weighting of indicators, the balance between hard and soft measurements, and broader questions about how capital is acquired, preserved, and, in rare cases, regained. Leaders in weakly democratic systems may be less prone to "normal" patterns of capital fluctuation. Overall, the LCI does allow students of political leadership to think about the difference between political office-holding and exercising political leadership, and about why and when some leaders are able to make the political weather rather than being swept along by it.

Transparency and responsiveness are core values of democratic governments, yet do Freedom of Information Laws - one of the legal basis for such values - actually help to increase these values? This paper reports a replication of a field experiment testing for the responsiveness of public authorities by Worthy et al (2016) in the United Kingdom. We sent 390 information requests to Dutch local government bodies, half of which were framed as official FOIA requests, the other half as informal requests for information. We were able to reproduce the original findings, that is, we found a positive effect of FOIA requests on responsiveness. The overall response rate of local governments was much higher (76%) and the size of the effect was larger than in the original experiment. Furthermore, the strongest effect of FOI was found on proactive disclosure (concordance), something that governments - strictly speaking - are not obliged to do according to the Dutch FOIA. Implications for future replication studies are discussed.

How can we evaluate government transparency arrangements? While the complexity and contextuality of the values at stake defy straightforward measurement, this article provides an interpretative framework to guide and structure assessments of government transparency. In this framework, we discern criteria clusters for political transparency—democracy, the constitutional state, and social learning capacity—and for administrative transparency—economy/efficiency, integrity, and resilience. The framework provides a structured "helicopter view" of the dimensions that are relevant for a contextual assessment of transparency. An illustrative case discussion of the introduction of Freedom of Information (FOI) in the United Kingdom demonstrates its utility.

This article argues that the extent to which political office-holders can effectively attain and wield authority is a function of the stock of 'leadership capital'. Drawing on the concept of political capital, the article defines leadership capital as aggregate authority composed of three dimensions: skills, relations and reputation of a leader. Leadership capital ebbs and flows over time within a trajectory of acquisition, expenditure and inevitable depreciation. The article presents a Leadership Capital Index (LCI) that systematically maps out the three broad areas combining concrete measures with interpretive aspects. This can be used as a tool for systematically tracking and comparing the political fortunes of leaders in a way that is both more nuanced and robust than exclusive reliance on the latest approval ratings. An illustrative case study of Tony Blair is used to demonstrate the LCI. The article concludes by discerning several promising paths for future development of the LCI.

Transparency and responsiveness are core values of democratic governments, yet do Freedom of Information Laws - one of the legal basis for such values - actually help to increase these values? This paper reports a replication of a field experiment testing for the responsiveness of public authorities by Worthy et al (2016) in the United Kingdom. We sent 390 information requests to Dutch local government bodies, half of which were framed as official FOIA requests, the other half as informal requests for information. We were able to reproduce the original findings, that is, we found a positive effect of FOIA requests on responsiveness. The overall response rate of local governments was much higher (76%) and the size of the effect was larger than in the original experiment. Furthermore, the strongest effect of FOI was found on proactive disclosure (concordance), something that governments - strictly speaking - are not obliged to do according to the Dutch FOIA. Implications for future replication studies are discussed.

This introductory chapter sets out the conceptual and methodological rationale for the book. The chapter reviews the field and places this new approach within the context of current leadership research. The Leadership Capital Index (LCI) builds on advances in understanding of how to track and assess political leadership. It offers the concept of "leadership capital," as an aggregate of authority that reaches across the traditional divide between structure and agency through a flexible analytical tool. The LCI offers a comprehensive yet parsimonious and easily applicable ten-point matrix to examine leadership authority over time and in different political contexts. The chapter sets out how this tool is utilized in the examination of the eleven-country case studies to better understand and explain the "puzzles" of contemporary political leadership.