By Toby McIntosh
The 11-year-old Open Government Partnership may not have delivered on “direct” results, but has generated valuable “indirect” benefits, according to a new book about the unusual international organization.
The authors critically review whether the OGP has succeeded in improving open government at the national level, and in particular whether member governments fulfilled their promises, what the authors term “direct gains.”
These results have been “limited,” “disappointing” and “often disappointingly ambiguous,” according to the authors.
After analyzing OGP data, they found that only one-third of 2,883 national commitments made by OGP members (now 76) were fully or substantially completed. “For every star, there is also a flop, along with many commitments that fall somewhere in between these archetypal categories,” according to their review.
Nevertheless, they forgivingly conclude that this outcome is “what one ought to reasonably expect at this stage in the initiative’s existence.” They note the confounding appearance of “major democratic disruptions” in the years following the OGP’s optimistic founding in 2011.
“The Power of Partnership in Open Government,” by Suzanne Piotrowski, Dan Berliner and Alex Ingrams, was published by MIT Press in December, 2022, and is available for sale, and to read via open access, here.
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Authors Focus on Indirect Benefits
The OGP experiment shouldn’t be judged purely quantitatively as a “commitment machine,” the authors argue.
Instead, they urge paying attention to other, less tangible, “indirect” benefits. These “process-driven mechanisms” include such things as the creation of “new norms and policy models of reform” and the forging of new connections among government officials from different countries.
The authors attempt to assess whether these more nebulous benefits were achieved, making a start on a research task that will soon be more important for the OGP itself.
New OGP Strategy Looks to Indirect Pathways
The OGP is pivoting toward a greater and more explicit emphasis on indirect pathways.
“As the headwinds get stronger, we have to double down on making open government the norm in governance,” the OGP states in a recent statement about its new five-year strategy, on which it is seeking public comment. “[T]en years of evidence shows that the core model works,” the OGP states, while admitting that “transformative commitments” by member governments have been “too few and far between.”
The OGP’s four proposed new “strategic goals” are:
- Build the commitment and capability of a diverse, and growing community of inter-connected open government leaders driving reforms.
- Catalyze transformative action towards making open government the norm at all levels and branches of government.
- Drive collective ambition and sustained results on open government norms in key policy areas.
- Become the home of cutting edge open government inspiration, innovation, evidence and stories.
These targets are similar to the indirect benefits identified and praised by Piotrowski, Berliner and Ingrams.
Indirect Pathways Categorized
“Indirect pathways of change,” the book’s authors conclude, “have often created powerful new forms of partnership and opportunities in ways that we would not have expected.” Going further, the authors say, the indirect pathways, “have more transformative potential, even if they are more difficult to observe and measure.”
They categorize the indirect benefits, describing “three overarching categories: new norms and policy models of reform, new resources and opportunities for reformers, and new linkages and coalitions.” For each category they describe specific indirect benefits.
Under the heading of “new linkages and coalitions,” the authors list three positive outcomes:
- new collaborations among major regional and global institutions,
- new transnational government-to-government connections, and
- new linkages among and across other nonstate organizations, including in policy and advocacy communities and ideological coalition.”
Seeking Proof of Indirect Benefits
The authors then provide qualitative evidence that’s indicative of positive outcomes, but could be more persuasive.
Regarding “new collaborations among international institutions,” the authors find “extensive evidence of open government initiatives,” listing related projects at various UN agencies, and citing a few examples of collaboration with the OGP. However, work on open government issues already was underway at some of these institutions and it’s difficult to show, nor do the authors assert, that the OGP was particularly influential.
A second indirect “linkage” benefit was the creation of connections between governments and government officials. The OGP sought to facilitate “peer to peer” interactions among government officials. Certainly top ministers interacted at the annual meetings and some regional meetings were held, as listed in the book.
But did these personal interactions persist and positively affect open government? The theories of change voiced by OGP officials suggested that some officials might be embarrassed by their country’s records and positively encourage by other’s successes. And that officials would create a “support network” for each other and exchange practical information. Certainly plausible results, but the degree to which this happened goes unexplored.
Undoubtedly the OGP brought government officials together, but further evaluation might have revealed whether the connections lived up to their potential. More complicated research, no doubt, but useful intelligence.
One specific OGP endeavor not addressed, for example, was the creation of five working groups on specific topics, such as access to information. This experiment bumped along for several years without much enthusiasm or success.
Evaluating the Value of Bringing CSOs Together
The authors’ third category of indirect benefits through building linkages concerns the concept of creating deeper interactions among non-state organizations, such as civil society organizations (CSOs).
“The participation of nonstate actors opens new political opportunities and creates new sources of influence, particularly for civil society groups, and brings together actors within and across countries who have often not worked together previously,” they wrote.
As one example of how policy and advocacy communities “become emboldened and enlarged by the influence of their country’s participation in the Open Government Partnership,” they cite “sufficient momentum among open government supporters for the passage of the Philippines’ first freedom of information law.”
This isn’t quite accurate. The Philippines joined the OGP in 2011 as one of eight founding members, but efforts to pass a FOI law failed every year afterwards notwithstanding strong lobbying by an already formed and active coalition of more than 150 various organizations. (A law still hasn’t passed.) Rather, in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte issued a FOI executive order that fell far short of the goals of the pro-FOI coalition.
The authors also cite an article by a Filipino activist saying that the OGP could be a way to seek CSOs to pressure the country to join the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative. (It did join, then dropped out after getting a bad rating, and now may rejoin.) Whether the OGP actually encouraged coalition-building among CSOs on the EITI issue goes unexplored. Perhaps a topic for a future case study.
Real, Lasting Alliances?
Also relevant, but also largely undocumented, is whether the OGP experience resulted in stronger alliances among various open government advocacy groups within member countries.
One of the most unique features of the OGP is a governance structure composed equally of representatives of governments and CSOs. Similar models were encouraged at the national level for the “co-creation” of open government commitments for the National Action Plans. The forging of stronger alliances among civil society groups was seen as a significant indirect benefit.
A case study (Chapter Five) concerns the OGP experience in Mexico, which the authors say spawning “a new culture of collaboration among civil society groups” although “not always been without friction.” Several positive examples from other counties are cited, without such deep research, but the evidence barely supports the broad conclusion that “[C]ombining forces has often increased the chances of pressuring governments to adopt reforms.”
Notwithstanding the authors’ interest in fathoming indirect effects, they passed up an opportunity to probe the impact of the Independent Reporting Mechanism.
In this key element of the OGP process, independent experts are hired to thoroughly assess the implementation of national action plans. Yet the complete, credible and often critical evaluations get scant attention in the media and it’s doubtful that governments feel their sting.
Looking Ahead: Research Challenges
The book ends with a call for “renewed efforts by researchers to harness the benefits of the indirect pathway and examine the complex ways it is interdependent with the direct pathway.” Perhaps the authors’ contribution of a typology, if not a description of how to create an evidentiary record, will lay the groundwork for future research.
The job begun by Piotrowski, Berliner and Ingrams tees up a challenge for the OGP (and other groups) to prove the value of indirect benefits.
Emphasizing the importance of the work, the authors state in an epilogue, “The future of open government may depend on how well governments can tie nongovernmental organizations and businesses into networks that support transparency, accountability, and participation, and deliver political justice in reforms.”
Suzanne J. Piotrowski is a Professor of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University–Newark and Director of the Transparency and Governance Center. Daniel Berliner is Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Alex Ingrams is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, the Netherlands.
(Personal Note: I covered the OGP for Freedominfo.org from its birth in 2011 until Freedominfo.org stopped publishing in 2017. I attended the first OGP annual conference and several others, writing more than 250 stories about the OGP. The authors cite a few of these articles. I spoke with Piotrowski and Berliner at an early stage in their research.)
