Municipal Openness in High-Secrecy Context: The Relation Between Transparency and Fiscal Performance

This study explores the relationship between transparency and budgetary performance in municipalities across Austria, a European country whose administrative system is still characterized by a culture of secrecy and lacking a federal Freedom of Information law. While existing literature asserts a positive relation between transparency and ‘good govern-ance’ in terms of fiscal performance, there remains a notable gap concerning empirical data from local governments in rich, industrialized democracies that are shaped by a certain de-gree of secrecy. This research seeks to address this gap by examining fiscal performance of the largest 80 municipalities in Austria, utilizing data from an open government platform alongside indicators from the Austrian Transparency International Index. Using longitudinal analysis methods while accounting for various covariates on the municipal level, the study aims to determine …