Publications

Governments implement transparency policies aiming to enhance citizens' trust, but the outcomes of these efforts are complex and not fully understood. Existing literature often focuses on how citizens consume government information, but tends to overlook the impact of the act of disclosure itself. This study seeks to fill this gap by examining citizens' responses to the act of government disclosure, independent of the content disclosed. Through a factorial survey experiment, the research manipulates motivations, types, and levels of information disclosure across two distinct organizations to assess their impact on public trust. The findings reveal that the act of disclosure generally enhances trust perceptions, but this effect is significantly modulated by individuals' pre-existing attitudes toward transparency. Those indifferent about transparency do not show increased trust, while for those who value transparency, trust increases notably. The study also finds that the disclosure of performance information, particularly when combined with financial information, has the most substantial impact on trust. Moreover, public trust is higher when organizations disclose more information than legally required. These results contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how government transparency influences public trust and highlight the importance of considering citizen attitudes in transparency initiatives.

This study uses quasi-experimental methods to test whether state Freedom of Information (FOI) reform affects the incumbency advantage in U.S. mayoral elections, hypothesizing larger effects in smaller cities, where pre-existing scrutiny is weaker and administrative-political networks are more visible. Using mayoral-election data and coded state FOI effective dates, we estimate a close-election difference-in-discontinuities design separately by city size. For cities below the median population (about 84,000 residents), we estimate that FOI adoption reduces the close-election incumbency advantage by 14.6 percentage points (p = 0.004 with standard errors clustered on state, the level at which treatment is assigned), with no detectable effect in large cities or in the fully pooled sample. Supporting designs point the same way without being uniformly significant. The analysis contributes quasi-experimental evidence that the electoral effect of FOI adoption depends on city size, and reports a local-press test that narrows the candidate mechanisms without settling them.

Scholars increasingly recognize that the relationship between transparency and trust in government is complex. Yet existing theories capture only fragments of it. As a result, it remains unclear why findings diverge and when transparency affects trust. We address this gap by developing an integrative account grounded in citizens' inferential processes. We distinguish transparency as a process (an organization's disclosure practices) from transparency as a product (the resulting availability of information to outsiders). We argue that transparency influences trust in public organizations through cues from which citizens infer an organization's capacity and orientation to fulfill its domain functions. These cues arise from the disclosure practice itself, from citizens' engagement with disclosed information (directly or through intermediaries), and from changes in organizational behavior and performance, grouped into disclosure-, information-, and behavior-based mechanisms. Drawing on attribution theory, complemented by agency and signaling theory, we specify the conditions and moderators under which each mechanism updates citizens' perceptions of organizational capacity, orientation, or both. Because transparency can strengthen, weaken, or leave these perceptions unchanged, the same mechanism can raise trust, leave it unchanged, or erode it. Trust and trustworthiness can also come apart. When disclosure changes the incentives citizens believe an organization's personnel face, transparency can raise trust without raising perceived trustworthiness. We systematize four boundary conditions and paradoxical effects under which transparency fails to build trust or undermines it, namely prior cynicism, information overload, metric gaming, and selective disclosure. We draw implications for research and for designing transparency initiatives attentive to citizens' interpretive processes and institutional environments.

Citizen voice is solicited in government to hold providers accountable, advance democratic values, and improve service delivery. Downstream citizen voice, such as complaints, can reveal pressure points, diverse needs, and failures in complex service ecosystems. However, theory and evidence on how noisy, unstructured citizen voice is mediated into policy and service arenas remain limited. Addressing this gap, this project looks to ombud institutions and related actors, which span citizen–state boundaries and policy networks. We use a qualitative approach to elaborate the concept of citizen voice mediation and to explore what strategies ombuds use to mediate downstream voice, and what drives these choices. Findings from interpretivist analysis of documents and interviews in Italy, the UK, and Argentina identify three outward mediation repertoires—authoritative‑targeted, facilitative‑collectivizing, and making information accessible and meaningful—expressed through directive (AR), hybrid (IT), and curatorial (UK) profiles. These strategies are shaped by different forms of ecosystemic fragmentation and actor capacities. The study advances a novel theorization of citizen voice mediation, develops positive propositions for testing, and deepens understanding of how voice can be strategically mediated to foster change in complex policy and service ecosystems.

This chapter examines the transformative potential of additive manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing, as a catalyst for a new industrial revolution. It contrasts AM with the traditional factory system, discussing how AM could decentralize production and enable mass customization. By presenting two scenarios, the chapter explores the economic and social impacts of widespread AM adoption, including shifts in labor markets, challenges to global supply chains, and issues surrounding intellectual property in a digital world. The discussion concludes by considering the broader implications of AM, highlighting its potential to democratize production and reduce waste while raising critical questions about economic stability and the future of work.