The Open Government Agenda and the Quest to Transform Government

Six years ago, U.S. President Barack Obama and U.K. Prime Minster David Cameron began a campaign to push open government and transparency, both domestically and abroad. “Were they successful?” and “What roadblocks did... [ view full abstract ]

Six years ago, U.S. President Barack Obama and U.K. Prime Minster David Cameron began a campaign to push open government and transparency, both domestically and abroad. “Were they successful?” and “What roadblocks did they encounter?” are still open questions. The Obama/Cameron push came as stakeholders around the world increasingly promoted an open government agenda – a new approach to reform that aims to transform government through transparency, participation, collaboration, and technological innovation. It has been six years since this agenda was institutionalized in the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international platform that has grown to over 75 member countries. The goal of the authors is to place the open government agenda broadly – and the OGP in particular – into a theoretical context, and explain both its successes and failures to date, as well as its lessons for future open government efforts.

The OGP was spearheaded by the Obama and Cameron administrations along with a consortium of international donors and foundations, and has been hailed by leaders around the world as a powerful tool of reform. The OGP represents a unique attempt to overcome the managerial and institutional dilemmas of transforming government on subnational, national, and global scales. Its innovative design features included institutionalized civil society collaboration, empowerment of national and transnational policy networks, allowing member countries to design and select their own policy commitments, and decentralized monitoring by outside experts. What roles did these innovations serve, and were they successful in promoting reform where past efforts had failed?

We argue that the open government agenda seeks to transcend and resolve the traditional dilemma of government reform: the tension between technocratic efficiency and democratic values. And yet, we argue that this tension has not gone away. Rather, the tension and its associated tradeoffs help explain why the OGP’s performance has in many cases been disappointing, and why conflict among state and civil society stakeholders is only increasing.

The timing is important, coming after six years of institutional growth and at the end of the Obama and Cameron eras, both of whom made significant claims to champion open government and transparency. The data include fieldwork, document analysis, and detailed data on the design and implementation of national commitments. This is a book length project and the introductory chapter to the manuscript will be presented at IRSPM if accepted.