Does political ideology act as a moderator of transparency drivers? An empirical analysis of active information disclosure in local governments

ABSTRACT

This article provides an analysis of the moderating role played by political ideology in transparency, thereby contributing to the growing body of literature on the topic of local government transparency. Although previous research has indicated that transparency in local governments depends on a variety of political factors, the influence of political ideology on transparency shows some inconsistencies. This paper argues that, among various political issues that affect the disclosure of information, political ideology acts as a moderator of active information disclosure. The empirical analysis is based on unbalanced panel data from 308 Portuguese municipalities. The results of this study confirm that political ideology moderates the relationship between political factors and active information disclosure. Specifically, they indicate that political ideology plays an important role in improving levels of transparency in municipalities governed by left-wing politicians.

KEYWORDS:

• Active information disclosure
• transparency
• local government
• political ideology
• municipalities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

The work reported here was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Ref. UIDB/CPO/00758/2020.

Notes

1. The winsorisation is a statistics procedure that may help to reduce the effect of extreme data and outliers. It is intended that the values at the ends of the distribution are not removed, but are recoded as less extreme values. Namely, the lowest 5% of values should be recoded to the 5th percentile value and the highest 5% should be recoded to the 95th percentile value.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joaquim Filipe Ferraz Esteves Araújo

Francisca Tejedo-Romero, Ph.D. in Accounting, University of Castilla‐La Mancha, Spain. Associate Professor of Accounting, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Castilla‐La Mancha, Albacete, Spain. Interests subjects: Transparency, Local Government, Public Management, Intellectual Capital and Social Responsibility. E-mail: [email protected]

Joaquim Filipe Ferraz Esteves Araújo, Ph.D. in Public Administration, University of Exeter, UK. Full Professor of Public Administration, School of Economics and Management, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal. Interests subjects: Public Management, Public Sector Reform, Transparency, Local Government, Governance. E-mail: [email protected]