Does The Perception Of Government Transparency Affect Citizen Participation?

Transparency and participation are seen as essential related to open government and key components of good governance.Among them,government transparency refers to the availability of information related to the process and results of government policy making and implementation.It is widely believed that government information transparency is a very effective administrative reform strategy to improve communication between the government and the public,to promote citizen participation,which can enhance the legitimacy of the government,improve the quality of government policy making,and curb corruption.As a result,since 2006,the international Rights to Know movement has grown rapidly and swept the world.So far,more than 80 countries and regions have enacted laws on the disclosure of government information.China also passed a regulation on the disclosure of government information in 2007,which went into effect nationwide in May 2008.Although higher transparency and participation are often considered to be concomitant,the relationship between them has not been well elaborated in the existing theoretical literature,and no consistent conclusion has been reached in the empirical research.Based on a large number of domestic and foreign literature,this paper constructs the theoretical framework of this paper by using Hirschman's "voice-exit" mechanism as the theoretical basis and introducing the external political efficacy as the mediating variable.Through a national sample survey and quantitative analysis with the help of professional statistical software SPSS,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)there is no mediating effect of external political efficacy between transparency perception and institutional participation,but there is a complete mediating effect between transparency perception and non-institutional participation.(2)the relationship between transparency perception and citizen participation is related to the initiator of participation behavior.It is true that the improved perception of transparency can stimulate citizens' spontaneous participation behavior,such as discussing political issues and reflecting opinions to government departments,while the perception of transparency has no significant influence on government-led participation behavior.(3)there is also a risk of improving the perception of transparency,which will lead to the occurrence of online/offline collective rights protection actions.This may be because the disclosure of information exposes problems in the government and inflames tensions between different citizens and between governments and citizens.(4)external political efficacy plays a positive role in promoting citizens' institutional participation,while it has an obvious inhibitory effect on non-institutional participation.(5)external political efficacy only plays an intermediary role between the perception of transparency and the participation in strikes/sit-ins/demonstrations/marches.The improvement of transparency perception weakens the citizens' sense of external political efficacy and further leads to the citizens' choice of non-institutional participation.The research results reveal the problems in the current information disclosure in China,such as the government's insufficient response,the institutional participation channels cannot meet the needs,and the lack of non-governmental organizations.Based on this,relevant policy Suggestions are put forward to help the government to do a good job in information disclosure and promote the good interaction between the government and citizens.