What Drives Online Transparency Practices at the Local Level? Evidence from 2222 Municipalities in Switzerland

Figures & Tables

Main types of transparency.

	Definition	Characteristics
Active	Proactive release of information on a voluntary basis, increasingly through online platforms (especially on government websites and apps)	Less codified form of transparency (Pasquier 2013), but increasingly used following the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs)
Passive	Disclosure of information on a constrained basis (as a response to official FOI requests or non-FOI requests)	Most codified form of transparency when a legislation on the matter exists (FOI). Laws’ features differ strongly from one case to another (Worthy 2017)
Forced	Spontaneous, uncontrolled disclosure of information by internal or external stakeholders, triggering quick reactions from governments	Processes surrounding whistleblowing phenomena are not always codified but protection regimes are being reinforced (Council of the EU 2019)

Dimensions and indicators of the local transparency index (LTI).

Dimensions	Indicators
A. Organizational information, social composition and operation of the municipality	General information on the role and functions of the executive body (distribution of the departments or dicastères) Roles and functions of the legislative commissions Biographical note/CV of the members of the executive council Possibility of direct contact with members of the executive council (email or/and phone) Register of interests of members of the executive council Agenda/minutes of the municipal legislative sessions in the last 2 years (either one or the other)
B. Reports and planning	Annual activity report (already done) Strategic plan (undertaking) Public works in progress (underway)
C. Local taxes, rates and regulations	Information on the tax rate Information on municipal taxes Regulations Publication of a newsletter or an information journal
D. Relations with citizens as customers	Search engine on the website of the municipality Links to social networks Possibility of submitting a request online Information on opening hours (municipality)
E. Public procurement	Tenders for public contracts
F. Economic and financial transparency	Publication of the annual budget Publication of municipal accounts

Descriptive statistics.

	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	St. Deviation
LTI, own elaboration (municipal websites)	2222	0.000	0.972	0.411	0.146
Population size (2017), natural logarithm	2217	2.565	12.877	7.333	1.257
Perceived municipal autonomy (2017), 10 = far-reaching autonomy	2105	1	10	6.284	1.298
Language area (2018), 1=German-speaking municipality	2212	0	1	0.643	0.479
Turnout in the elections of the municipal executive (2017), %	1455	3	95	46.572	16.778
Existence of a cantonal FOI law (2018), 1 = yes (own calculation)	2222	0	1	0.905	0.293
Municipal tax (2018) for standard profile, own calculation based on comparator website	2221	1767	12278	7175.045	1573.073
Municipal full-time equivalent posts (2015), own calculation based on FSO (2018b)	2167	0.020	11298	42.073	291.456
Median age (2017), own calculation based on FSO (2018a)	2218	31	80	45.613	3.941

Determinants of Swiss municipalities’ online communication (standardized beta coefficients and clustered standard errors).

Predictors	OLS	CSE
Ln population size (2017)	0.070***	0.003
Perceived municipal autonomy (2017)	0.002	0.002
Language area (2018)	0.001	0.009
Turnout in the elections of the municipal executive (2017)	0.000	0.000
Existence of a cantonal FOI law (2018)	–0.040**	0.013
Municipal tax (2018)	0.005*	0.002
Municipal full-time equivalent posts (2015)	6.293E-6	1.722E-5
Median age (2017)	0.002*	0.001
Constant	–0.232***	0.060
R2	0.349

[i] *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1.