Throughout the past few decades, governmental transparency has become a hot topic within public administration. However, very limited quantitative research has been conducted questioning if governmental transparency, or at least a citizens perception or use of governmental transparency, is beneficial for governmental agencies and its citizens. Ultimately, this dissertations goal is to add to a very limited set of U.S. public administration transparency literature. To achieve this goal, this dissertation first analyzes current governmental transparency publications and research focusing on specific relationships between a citizens perception and use of governmental transparency, public trust in government, and public participation. To test these relationships, a 2009 survey conducted by the Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Pew Internet and American Life Project is used. With this robust data set, this research study finds that a relationship between governmental transparency perception and a citizens trust in government does exist, but the relationship is extremely weak in a negative direction (transparency pessimism). Furthermore, a relationship between governmental transparency perception and a citizens participation in government also exists, but the relationship is also extremely weak in a negative direction. The key finding in this research is that a statistical significant, positive relationship exists between governmental transparency use and citizen participation. Higher governmental transparency use leads to increases in citizen participation. Public administers should be aware of this relationship to enhance overall public participation in government. When publishing governmental transparency data, a public administrator must know their audience since, as this research reveals, governmental transparency is a driver to citizen participation.

Public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens' Assemblies, Juries, Panels and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems ranging from climate change to infrastructure investment decisions. They convene groups of people representing a wide cross-section of society for at least one full day – and often much longer – to learn, deliberate, and develop collective recommendations that consider the complexities and compromises required for solving multifaceted public issues.

Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

"This book focuses on the issues and challenges involving adoption and implementation of online civic engagement initiatives globally and will serve as a valuable guide to governments in their efforts to enable active citizen participation"--Provided by publisher.

On January 2009, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. The memorandum declares the new Administration’s commitment to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government and establishing a system linking three principles: transparency, public participation and collaboration. Since then, federal agencies in the United States and public administrations around the world have embarked on open government initiatives and have worked to redefine their relationship with citizens and with each other. On September 20th, 2011, eight governments gathered in New York City to launch the Open Government Partnership, a new multilateral initiative to promote open government. The benefits attributed to open government are many and by no means universally shared. They include the claims that open government leads to more effective decision making and services, safeguards against corruption, enables public scrutiny, and promotes citizens’ trust in government. However, the speed of events and pressure to implement has given rise to confusion and ambiguity. Although many of the initiatives have been based on opening data and on promoting open action, governments have followed different directions and interpretations when it has come to implement them and development of open government has become unequal and heterogeneous. This book provides a comprehensive study of recent major developments of open government around the world, and analyzes the importance of open government efforts for public governance, making it of interest to academics and practitioners worldwide.

This report takes stock of progress made in implementing the 2010 Recommendation on Principles for Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying – the only international instrument addressing major risks in the public decision-making process related to lobbying.