Open government partnership: unutilized potential in post-communist EU members? (Case of the Czech Republic)
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Date
2017
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Abstract
One of the factors that contribute to confining corruption opportunity space is
transparent lobbying as part of a broader approach to governance, based on the
principles of openness, transparency, participation and disclosure. The problem of
lack of transparent lobbying is closely related not only to corruption but to increased
inequality of access by voices representative of a wide range of interests to public
decision-making. This issue is also one of the relevant issues of Europeanisation that
comes to attention in the European public space; lobbying is an important source of
information for European decision-making processes, which speaks in favour of
creating transparent rules for its functioning. Despite a real reluctance of national
political representation to enforce statutory regulation of lobbying there is however a
number of factors (besides regulation) that contribute to the transparency of
lobbying. One of them is Open Government Partnership initiative which takes a
more comprehensive approach to openness via seeking ways to make the
government more transparent, responsive, accountable, and effective. The paper
focuses on two research questions: Under what circumstances may open government
affect the transparency of lobbying and thereby reduce the corruption opportunity
space? Does the Czech Republic use the potential of its membership in Open
Government Partnership well? The analysis is completed by data from Bulgaria,
Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia. The performed research uses
descriptive, analytic, comparative and interpretive techniques.
Description
Subject(s)
civil society, Czech Republic, European public space, lobbying, open government, open government data, Open government partnership, Post-communist countries, transparency
Citation
ISSN
1469-8412