Dynamic Transparency: A Test of Mexico’s FOI Law

Freedom of information (or FOI) laws empower the public to access documents held by the government with only a few and stated exceptions. These laws are widely believed to strengthen transparency and promote accountability, and yet the existence of a law does not guarantee its enforcement. This challenge is especially felt in Mexico, a nascent democracy facing entrenched corruption that only recently approved its FOI law. As a test of this law, in 2007, 2013 and 2015, we actively probed a random sample of approximately 120 government offices for information. We tallied whether agencies agreed or refused to respond. Among the agencies that responded, we measured their average response time, the number of questions answered, the quality of the answers provided, and the quantity of information afforded. Our measurement study also benefits from qualitative information gathered through elite interviews, and reveals whether transparency has progressed or regressed in Mexico.