Replication Data for: Do Citizens See Through Transparency? Evidence from Survey Experiments in Peru

Many promote government transparency, yet we know little about transparency’s effects. We use a series of survey experiments on the streets of Lima, Peru, to investigate a simple question: what are the effects of government-sponsored transparency websites, and the information revealed by those efforts, on attitudes about the Peruvian political system? Like many developing countries, Peru lacks much system support, making it more difficult to improve governance and democracy. We find that transparency itself has little impact on political attitudes. However, some dimensions of the information provided by transparency matter: endorsement by a credible third party or framing that associates comparatively good community well-being with government performance. Under those conditions, Peruvians increase their approval of the national political community, the regime’s performance, regime institutions, and local government. The increases are substantively large, ranging between 6 to 11 points on our 100-point scales, or about half of a standard deviation of the variation in the control groups.