Councillors in a Fishbowl: Political Disclosure and Political Transparency in Romanian Local Government

Research focused on governmental transparency has distinguished between several dimensions of transparency: financial, administrative, activity-related (policy), and political transparency (Cucciniello, Porumbescu, and Grimmelikhuijsen 2017). Among these, political transparency is a linking element, as it concerns the availability of information concerning elected bodies and political representatives, going as far as information concerning salaries or involvement in policy and decision-making or day to day operation of the administration. Starting from the literature concerning political transparency and determinants of transparency in general, this paper aims to do two things. First, it explores political transparency and its determinants in a specific national context defined by rather detailed top-down regulation of local government transparency. Thus, it looks at the second tier of local government in Romania and takes advantage of national regulations compelling local elected officials (councillors) to submit annual activity reports which become public. The paper explores the influence of institutional characteristics, demands from local civil society, and individual characteristics of the political leader of the institution on both on-line and off-line political transparency at institutional level. In doing so it exploits the advantages of a set of data collected by a think-tank (Public Policy Centre – CENPO from Cluj-Napoca) which accounts for whether and when the same specific information concerning the activity of local elected officials is made available through off-line (traditional, compulsory) and on-line (voluntary) channels. Second, and departing from most of the transparency literature, the paper moves the discussion from the institutional to the individual level and explores political disclosure by councillors in relation to their formally and objectively defined disclosure duties as well as their more subjective representational role orientations. Thus, it tests the influence of individual characteristics of councillors, general institutional characteristics, and demands from local civil society over what individual councillors choose to disclose in their public activity report. The paper also explores whether the existence of an institutional policy concerning on-line transparency influences positively political disclosure by individual councillors. In doing so, the paper hopes to contribute to a better understanding of how the computer mediation of transparency challenges and possibly changes the councillors’ role orientations and role performance. The analysis is quantitative in nature and builds upon the CENPO database concerning political transparency as well as official statistical data from various sources.