Data for: Does the Freedom of Information Law Increase Transparency at the Local Level? Evidence from a Field Experiment

Published: 11 May 2018| Version 1 | DOI: 10.17632/g7hhvfrsmc.1
Contributors:
Petr Voda, Jozef Zagrapan, Peter Spáč

Description

Data are based on three sources: 1) own survey on municipalities, 2)Census conducted by the Slovak Statistical Office, and 3) electoral results of local elections in 2014. Dataset uses the municipalities (identified by their code) that gave us in survey some sort of response as well as those that did not. The dependent variable of analysis in accompanied paper variable is the response and it is coded into two categories. Value one is given to municipalities that sent us at least some information. These include both responses containing complete data for both local elections we were interested in as well as partially complete responses that included data for at least one of the two elections. In the event that a municipality sent a link, we accepted this as a response containing some information if the link led directly to the requested data or if it was accompanied with guidelines leading to this result. All other municipalities are given the value of zero on the dependent variable. These are municipalities that did not reply at all or they replied but without sending any data on candidates. 102 municipalities in our dataset had non-functioning e-mail addresses in the database; these generated automatic responses which are also coded as non-response. Other variables included in data are request type, affiliation of mayors , share of Hungarians, population size Variable request type has three categories associated with the versions of letters send to municipalities. The “control” category is comprised of municipalities who received a baseline letter, the “legal” variant is comprised of municipalities who received the letter with the paragraph referring to FOI law and the third category, the “moral appeal” variant, is comprised of municipalities that received a letter with the moral paragraph. Each category covers one third of municipalities The variable on mayors is categorical. It distinguishes two basic types of mayors – partisans and independents. In the case of the variable on Hungarian minority, we differentiate between four categories based on the municipal share of Hungarians. Population size is measured by number inhabitants according to the 2011 Census. We use a logged version of this variable.

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