Closing Open Government: Grassroots Policy Conversion of China’s Open Government Information Regulation and Its Aftermath

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402110243
Author(s):  
Jieun Kim ◽  
Rachel E. Stern ◽  
Benjamin L. Liebman ◽  
Xiaohan Wu
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Feedback Loop ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Open Government ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Action ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Legal Activism ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Government Documents

How and when do opportunities for political participation through courts change under authoritarianism? Although China is better known for tight political control than for political expression, the 2008 Open Government Information (OGI) regulation ushered in a surge of political-legal activism. We draw on an original dataset of 57,095 OGI lawsuits, supplemented by interview data and government documents, to show how a feedback loop between judges and court users shaped possibilities for political activism and complaint between 2008 and 2019. Existing work suggests that authoritarian leaders crack down on legal action when they feel politically threatened. In contrast, we find that courts minted, defined, and popularized new legal labels to cut off access to justice for the super-active litigants whose lawsuits had come to dominate the OGI docket. This study underscores the power of procedural rules and frontline judges in shaping possibilities for political participation under authoritarianism.

scholarly journals Resolving the puzzle of conspiracy worldview and political activism: Belief in secret plots decreases normative but increases non-normative political engagement.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Imhoff ◽  
Lea Dieterle ◽  
Pia Lamberty
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Intentions To Participate ◽  
Willingness To Engage

It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present paper, we tested the notion, whether a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and b) there may be opposing relations to normative vs. non-normative forms of political engagement. Two pre-registered experiments (N = 194; N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participation but increases reported intentions to employ non-normative, illegal means of political articulation. These results provide first evidence for the notion that political extremism and violence might seem an almost logical conclusion when seeing the world as governed by conspiracies.

The Role of Information Institutions in Promoting Information Literacy and Access to Information for Sustainable Development in the Post-Truth Era

2021 ◽  
pp. 78-99
Author(s):  
Proscovia Svärd
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Open Government ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Development Goal ◽  
Qualitative Research Methodology ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Right ◽  
Role Of Information

The right to access government information has been a key element of sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Declaration. It is further recognized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, governments are through open government initiatives making information available to the citizens. This is based on a supposition that everyone is information literate and yet this is not the case. Information literacy is defined as the ability to be able to act on the information that is provided to us citizens. Being able to locate, evaluate, and ethically use information is an ability that is crucial to the citizens' participation in society. It requires individuals to be in possession of a set of skills that can enable them to recognize when information is needed to be able to locate, evaluate, and use it effectively. Information institutions have been the gateways to knowledge, and hence, their resources and services have been crucial to the development of information literate, creative, and innovative societies. This study sought to establish how the information institutions in Sweden were promoting information literacy in accordance with Sustainable Development Goal 16 amidst the post-truth era. The author has applied a qualitative research methodology where interviews have been used as a data collecting technique.

The Role of Information Institutions in Promoting Information Literacy and Access to Information for Sustainable Development in the Post-Truth Era

2022 ◽  
pp. 1179-1200
Author(s):  
Proscovia Svärd
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Open Government ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Development Goal ◽  
Qualitative Research Methodology ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Right ◽  
Role Of Information

The right to access government information has been a key element of sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Declaration. It is further recognized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, governments are through open government initiatives making information available to the citizens. This is based on a supposition that everyone is information literate and yet this is not the case. Information literacy is defined as the ability to be able to act on the information that is provided to us citizens. Being able to locate, evaluate, and ethically use information is an ability that is crucial to the citizens' participation in society. It requires individuals to be in possession of a set of skills that can enable them to recognize when information is needed to be able to locate, evaluate, and use it effectively. Information institutions have been the gateways to knowledge, and hence, their resources and services have been crucial to the development of information literate, creative, and innovative societies. This study sought to establish how the information institutions in Sweden were promoting information literacy in accordance with Sustainable Development Goal 16 amidst the post-truth era. The author has applied a qualitative research methodology where interviews have been used as a data collecting technique.

scholarly journals Resolving the Puzzle of Conspiracy Worldview and Political Activism: Belief in Secret Plots Decreases Normative but Increases Nonnormative Political Engagement

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Imhoff ◽  
Lea Dieterle ◽  
Pia Lamberty
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Intentions To Participate

It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present article, we tested the notion, whether (a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and (b) there may be opposing relations to normative versus nonnormative forms of political engagement. Two preregistered experiments ( N = 194, N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participation but increases reported intentions to employ nonnormative, illegal means of political articulation. These results provide first evidence for the notion that political extremism and violence might seem an almost logical conclusion when seeing the world as governed by conspiracies.

Key Issues for Implementation of Chinese Open Government Information Regulations

2009 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. S129-S135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne J. Piotrowski ◽  
Yahong Zhang ◽  
Weiwei Lin ◽  
Wenxuan Yu
Keyword(s):  
Open Government ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Key Issues
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