Government Transparency and Policymaking
نویسندگان
چکیده
This paper identifies conditions under which voters are better off not knowing the policy choices of incumbents: we show that government transparency can actually lower voter welfare. To do so, we analyze a model of political agency where voters face two forms of uncertainty: uncertainty about the incumbent’s policy preferences and uncertainty about the relationship between policies and outcomes. The harm from increasing the transparency of the lawmaking process is that it increases the incidence of “posturing” among reelection oriented incumbents. We show that the welfare losses which result from government transparency are greatest when most politicians share the public’s policy preferences. JEL Classification: D72, D78.
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