Transparency, civic capital and political accountability: A virtuous relation?
利用意大利市政数据和新透明度指标，研究发现公民资本能提升政府透明度，且透明度对地方官员的政治回报取决于公民资本水平。
Abstract Our paper investigates the intertwined relation among transparency, civic capital and political accountability in a large sample of Italian municipalities using a new indicator of institutional transparency. Firstly, we test the hypothesis that civic capital affects transparency of public administrations; secondly, we verify whether in municipalities where civic capital is high, citizens’ attention toward government accountability is also high, making it politically unfeasible to disregard the demand for transparency. We find that civic capital positively affects transparency and the latter, in turn, is politically rewarding for the local administrators only conditional to the level of civic capital. Our findings are robust to different samples and endogeneity concerns.