Abstract

This article contributes to the expanding body of literature on proactive transparency that is increasing worldwide in the context of the broader open government movement. Building on the institutional processualist approach, it develops a research framework that seeks to explain the dynamics of proactive transparency. In doing so, it unveils the concatenation of causal mechanisms triggered by the interaction between policy design and contextual features. The framework is applied to the Italian case, where the call for proactive disclosure of information has intensified to restore trust in government in a context marked by the intertwining of fiscal crisis and corruption scandals.