Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 29th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG9: The Rule of Law & Public Administration (Physical) Author(s) Marek Rybar Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic Katarína Staroňová Title Freedom of Information, Bureaucratic Responsiveness, and Civil Servants' Accountability: Evidence from a quasi-experiment and a natural experiment File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Marek Rybar Abstract In this paper, we address the question of whether and how formal institutions influence the behavior of civil servants. We analyze the activities of 79 heads of vertical state administration offices in Slovakia to assess whether the usage of freedom of information (FOI) requests, compared to ethical appeals to the public interest, increases the likelihood of publicizing requested information. In addition, we investigate the impact of selection mechanisms through which they are appointed on their willingness to share information with the public. In a quasi-experimental design, we address official letters to all 79 vertical state administration district heads, asking them to publicize the names and scope of activities of heads of all departments in their District Office, and the CVs of the heads of District Offices. While information about the structure of management in District Offices clearly falls within the scope of FOI requests, publicizing CVs of the civil servants is in a grey zone. Nevertheless, there is a propensity of Slovak state institutions to interpret it as information covered by the protection of privacy (GDPR). We use both the formal freedom of information requests and informal appeals to the general public interest to induce the District Office Heads to comply with the requests. Our results indicate that appeals to public interest add little to sharing information with the public. In addition, there is a propensity of the District Offices to follow formalistic bureaucratic procedures and pass the request to other institutions even when they clearly have all the information at their disposal. Furthermore, in a natural experiment manner, we assess the impact of the selection mechanisms by which the District Office Heads are selected on their willingness to share information with the public. Following the 2020 parliamentary elections, all 79 heads of district offices appointed by the previous government were recalled. Forty-six of their successors were directly selected and appointed by the largest governing party (direct political appointments), while the remaining district office heads were chosen in open competition before the official selection committees. We assess whether the two methods lead to differentiated responses to information requests not based on the freedom of information laws. While we assume that the two groups of civil servants differ in their previous political engagement and their experience with work in the state administration, we do not expect differentiated responses to informal requests. The paper thus shows that that specialized formal tools (FOI requests) have a stronger impact than other formal institutions (selection criteria) on the inclination of civil servants to provide information to the public. The proposed paper falls within Topic 2 of the RoL in Public Administration Working Group.
