Easier said than done? Implementing RTI-laws in Sweden

Abstract

Transparency is widely recognized as a prerequisite for accountability, good governance and de-mocracy. As right to information (RTI) laws have spread, it is pressing to ask to what extent having ambitious formal legislative frameworks in place also means de facto transparency. This paper deals with this overarching question in two ways. First, we ask how well local governments in Sweden – a ‘most-likely country’ for implementing RTI-laws – comply with its ambitious Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act. Second, we ask if Swedish New Public Management-reforms – here exemplified with increased public ownership of private enterprises – imply lessened compliance with RTI-legislation. Employing a field experiment, requesting information from 462 public administrations and publicly owned municipal enterprises, counter-intuitive findings are observed. Less than half of the population respected the RTI-legislation, and no significant differences were found between the public administrations and publicly owned enterprises. The findings have methodological as well as empirical implications. They highlight the importance of not only studying legislative frameworks, but also analyzing de facto-implementation of RTI-frameworks in everyday situations. Also, they demonstrate that problems relating to openness can be found in low-corrupt, mature democracies with strong bureaucratic capacity, that traditionally are hailed for their long history of ambitious RTI-laws; and interestingly, that NPM-reforms do not necessarily imply lack of transparency.Key words: Right to information, freedom to information, transparency, accountability, new public management, public enterprises, hybrid organizations, corruption, Sweden, local government