Worthy, B. and Waugh, M. (2024) More open, more democratic or better at hiding? Two decades of local government transparency in the UK. Local Government Studies, 50 (6). pp. 1062-1073. ISSN 0300-3930
Abstract
Local government has long been the site of experiments and innovation in transparency. Since the 1990s waves of reforms have sought to open up local government in Britain, from the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in the 2000s to Open Data in the 2010s. This paper looks across the evidence to see how well these new transparency tools have worked, who is using them and why. It then moves to analyse what impact the changes have had on local government, in line with hopes of campaigners and fears of (some) politicians. Have reforms succeeded in making local government more open, more accountable and more participative, and in what situations? Or have they, as some claim, simply driven decision-making into other arenas, and made local bodies ‘better at hiding’? Finally, how does transparency sit with the fragmented and disjointed landscape of local politics today, from outsourcing and devolution to financial crisis?
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Transparency; freedom of information; UK; local government; openness |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 20 Nov 2024 16:10 |
Last Modified: | 10 Feb 2025 16:56 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/03003930.2024.2417222 |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219827 |
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Licence: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0