Analyzing the Transparency Traditional Variables Within the Spanish Municipalities

Abstract

This paper analyzes the variables traditionally used to explain transparency in the empirical literature within the sphere of Spanish municipalities. The analysis has focused on 144 city councils with more than 50,000 inhabitants, covering 53% of the population of Spain. It consists fi rstly of an analysis of their web pages in order to explain the levels of transparency through the use of the legal conditions that currently exist in Spain and the authors own transparency index, and secondly of the verifi cation of an explicative hypothesis for each of the variables. Our fi ndings allow us to state that there are two explicative variables for municipal transparency, which are present in the majority of works previously consulted: ‘size of population’, and ‘volume of investment’. In addition to the aforementioned variables, the research has also shown that the variable ‘level of education’ of the municipality’s inhabitants is an explicative variable as regards the level of transparency, such that higher levels of education correspond to a greater degree of transparency.

Keywords

• transparency, accountability, spanish municipalities, local governments.