Why Choose Open Government? Motivations for the Adoption of Open Government Policies in Four European Countries

Open government policies (on transparency, participation, and collaboration, but also on digital technology) are spreading across Europe as a new governance model, but are not homogeneous across different countries. By adopting a qualitative computer-assisted analysis of policy documents from France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, we mapped the different meanings of open government by examining the specific measures and key motivations for their adoption in order to find out how different national governments frame the variables of open government. The article shows the emergence of competing models of open government: on the one hand, the hegemonic model of open government seems to stress innovation and openness in the sense of an enhanced transparency, and occasionally of public–private collaboration, but failing to achieve an open decision making. We have detected a paradox in the open government implementation: the economic lens, although softened by a drive toward innovation, anchors the policy-making process in already-consolidated mechanisms, rather than in substantive change. On the other hand, we can foresee the emergence of a different perspective on open government, which provides a proper policy framework for democratic innovations to develop.