ANALYZING THE TRANSPARENCY TRADITIONAL VARIABLES WITHIN THE SPANISH MUNICIPALITIES.

• Author: Heras, Emilio Navarro

1. Introduction

   The Spanish public administration currently appears to have made the objective of transparency in public management a priority. This may be evidenced by the setting up of the State General Administration transparency portal in December 2014, following the publication of the Law on transparency, access to public information and good government in December 2013. This concept is, in addition to being a political formula, well documented in the relevant literature which, from the academic perspective, contains numerous studies that attempt to explain transparency by means of economic, political and institutional variables.

   The objective of our research is to provide empirical evidence with which to explain the levels of transparency attained by Spanish municipalities through the use of independent variables that provide a certain predictive capacity as regards this attainment of transparency. More specifically, we aim to define an instrument with which to measure transparency through the use of the legal conditions that currently exist in Spain, i.e., the aforementioned Law no. 19/2013, of December 9. Previous studies have used either transparency indices based on the transparency perceived by the public or indicators constructed using the evaluation of practices that are or are not deemed to be appropriate for transparency from the research perspective. The objective of our research is therefore to objectivize this question to the full by creating our own index that is based exclusively on legal requirements.

   This work is focused on attempting to verify whether the variables that the relevant literature has identified as being explicative of transparency have the same correlation when the index of transparency used is an indicator that has been created using the legal obligations of transparency and not other indicators with certain subjectivity.

2. Conceptual framework for transparency

   In accordance with the previously stated objectives, we shall begin by conceptually defining transparency through the use of pre-existing objective elements, i.e., the legal requirements contained in the Spanish legal framework. Therefore, article 105 of the Spanish Constitution establishes that: 'The law will regulate: (...) b) the public's access to archives and administrative registers (...)'. The culmination of regulations as regards transparency was attained in 2013 with the approval of Law no. 19/2013. This law drafts the fulfillment of the principle of transparency by means of the creation of active publicity obligations for all administrations. Since it is desired that the local autonomy that is guaranteed in the Constitution should form municipalities and provinces which are the territorial entities that are closest to the public, we agree with Bello (2014) in that it is in the local framework that the fulfillment of the paradigm of government should be ensured (in the sense of the ideal transparent management model).

   In our opinion, transparency in public management could be defined as a management model that uses information technologies to provide the public with reasonably up-to-date information regarding those areas that may be of interest to them. Since the doctrine appeared it is possible to find numerous works in literature that attempt to justify transparency as an essential characteristic of present-day public administration (Bertot, Jaeger and Grimes, 2010). Fernandez-Pirla (2012) describes the current era as being that of information and technology owing to the abundant evidence of information and the use of new communication networks that, in his opinion, permit the use of 'open' governance models with an observance of all the variables implied. Barea (2004, p. 3), meanwhile, considers that the basis of budgetary credibility lies in transparency such that 'transparency would be to public entities what the market is to businesses', thus permitting the correct functioning of public administration. Cucciniello (2014) propones a system of useful information rather than formal procedures of compliance and accountability.

   Transparency can therefore be conceptually justified as the logical evolution of a management model whose forerunners can be found in the New Public Management in which e-government is extended as a means to provide the public with more efficient services by taking advantage of the possibilities offered by the development of ICTs. The expansion of this model would lead to the so-called e-democracy which would culminate in e-governance. Ruano de la Fuente (2014) has studied the impact of the ICTs in Spanish local governments concluding that the impact on the reform policies has been unequal.

   Nevertheless, the definition of the term 'transparency' is more ambiguous, and it is defined as a broad concept whose outlines are at times rather vague. In this respect, Merino (2009) defines transparency as a system of networks in which everyone controls everyone else, and everyone is required to be and is responsible to everyone else. In other words, it is a system in which there is a combination of horizontal and vertical accountability: on the one hand we find the top-down hierarchies that control and demand clear accountability from their subordinates, and on the other, the public, organizations and companies at the bottom who wish to be informed about what the government (at the top) is doing (O'Donnell, 1998a).

   Labeaga and Ramiro (2013) define transparency in the specific sphere of the public sector as the concept that is internationally alluded to as the openness and clarity of governments' and institutions' activities for scrutiny by society and interest groups. It is a democratic practice with which to facilitate public access to institutions' social, political and economic information, which are therefore accessible and reliable and which consequently facilitates greater social participation in decision making. With regard to the international sphere, Kopits (2000) similarly interprets transparency as easy and opportune access to reliable, complete comprehensible and comparable information. Armstrong (2005) relates the concepts of 'integrity', 'transparency' and 'accountability', indicating that they are the fundamental principles of public administration and depend on each other.

   Budgetary-financial transparency when understood as accountability has been the object of academic reflection as regards: its meaning and objectives (Brandsma, 2007), its links to corruption (Goodspeed, 2011) and its social aspects (O'Donnell, 1998b; Peruzzotti and Smulovite, 2002; Przeworski, 1998). Financial condition is one of the aspects most commonly addressed in studies in this field. It is considered a key factor in determining the level of disclosure of economic-financial information by public administration institutions (Alcaide-Munoz, Rodriguez-Bolivar and Garde-Sanchez, 2014). It can particularly be broadly defined as the social practice of the relationship between public administration and society, such that public managers explain themselves to their electorate on the basis of documented information concerning accounting and budgetary matters and the management of their annual economic-financial activity.

   Within the Spanish sphere, Zapico Goni (2010) states that the transparency of public spending is oriented towards the fulfillment of traditional budgetary principles and fiscal discipline. Alvarez-Garcia and Cantarero-Prieto (2004) meanwhile analyze transparency in public administrations' accounts by incorporating the Spanish scene of territorial decentralization, and the objective of budgetary discipline that has characterized public policies in recent years. Finally, and also within the Spanish sphere, it is worth mentioning the work of Melle-Hernandez (2014) who rightly reflects on the subject of transparency using the proliferation of public-private collaboration models.

3. Review of empirical literature

   Alcaide-Munoz, Rodriguez-Bolivar and Garde-Sanchez, (2014) and Rodriguez-Bolivar, Alcaide-Munoz and Lopez-Hernandez (2012) deal with those academic studies that are related to transparency, public participation and e-government. This exhaustive compilation shows the preferably descriptive nature of the works, which are in general focused on analyzing observed cases or the evaluation of the results of these initiatives.

   With regard to the existing works on transparency, it is worth differentiating between two types of empirical studies. On the one hand, we find those works that have been produced with the aim of evaluating the fulfillment of transparency by one or a group of administrations using indicators, indices or standards produced by international organisms or institutions (the International Monetary Fund--IMF and International Transparency--IT) and, on the other hand, we find those academic studies that attempt to explain the independent variable of 'transparency'. However, both types of studies coincide in their definitions of degrees of transparency, which are based on the public's (perceived transparency) or the administration's own investigators' evaluation of particular characteristics or behavior of that administration.

   This first group of studies is, in part, formed of those works published by the IMF (2007a; 2007b) and the OECD (2002) using indices created on the basis of the answers to a long list of questions on subjects related to the aggregate level of spending, formal budgetary processes, the incorporation of non-financial information at an operative level, etc.

   With regard to the second group of studies, according to Vila i Vila (2013) two relevant works stand out in the sphere of Spanish local administration, both of which deal with budgetary-financial transparency: those of Serrano-Cinca, Rueda-Tomas and Portillo-Tarragona (2008) and Carcaba and Garcia (2008). The former attempts to explain the financial information published on the Internet using the...