Financial Transparency in Mexican Municipalities: An Empirical Research

Transparency has become a critical issue in the context of the adoption of new technologies in the public sector. In particular, the disclosure of financial information represents a key modality of transparency in which governments have the opportunity to improve their relationship with citizens and harness civic participation by reporting patrimonial aspects of public entities, budgetary execution of public operations, and other specific financial information, tools and policies. This research contributes to the literature on governmental financial disclosure by proposing a scoring system and evaluating its measurements using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The scoring system applies a content analysis of government financial information available on official municipal governments' websites in Mexico. The EFA identifies the different dimensions of financial transparency. An overview of the e-democracy process was conducted to frame the relation between accountability and the role of new technologies in the context of disclosure of government financial information. The results of this study help to identify three dimensions of financial transparency: (1) patrimonial information, (2) budgetary execution, and (3) other specific transparency information, tools and policies. The analysis also provides evidence that population size and metropolitan character of municipalities matter for a better practice of financial transparency. Other findings are also presented.