Sunshine laws establishing government transparency are ubiquitous in the United States; however, the\u00a0intended degree of openness is often unclear or unrealized. Although researchers have identified characteristics of\u00a0government organizations or officials that affect the fulfillment of public records requests, they have not considered the\u00a0influence that government organizations have on one another. This picture of independently acting organizations does\u00a0not accord with the literature on diffusion in public policy and administration. This article presents a field experiment testing whether a county government\u2019s fulfillment of a public records request is influenced by the knowledge that\u00a0its peers have already complied. The authors propose that knowledge of peer compliance should induce competitive\u00a0pressures to comply and resolve legal ambiguity in favor of compliance. Findings indicate peer conformity affects both\u00a0in the time to initial response and in the rate of complete request fulfillment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunshine laws establishing government transparency are ubiquitous in the United States; however, the\u00a0intended degree of openness is often unclear or unrealized. Although researchers have identified characteristics of\u00a0government organizations or officials that affect the fulfillment of public records requests, they have not considered the\u00a0influence that government organizations have on one another. 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