Research and Markets: Freedom of Information in the Developing World: Compliance and Democratic Behaviours Discusses Whether FOI Really Helps to Build Democratic Practices

DUBLIN--(Business Wire)--
Research and Markets
(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/287901/freedom_of_informa) has
announced the addition of Woodhead Publishing Ltd's new report "Freedom of
Information in the Developing World: Compliance and Democratic Behaviours" to
their offering.

This book develops a discourse about the concept of FoI. It includes an
examination of primary materials and policy development and identifies the
social and economic constraints.

Rather than simply summarizing the state of play in African countries and
elsewhere, this book attempts to identify and to make explicit the assumptions
about the citizen's relationship to the state that lie beneath Freedom of
Information (FoI) discourse, and then to test them against the reality of the
pervasive politics of patronage that characterize much of African practice. The
two sides of the equation are the willingness and capacity of a state
bureaucracy to comply with legislation, and the growth of a demand for
accountability on the part of the citizenry. This second aspect is complicated
in many countries by a discourse/language problem. Finally, the book asks
whether, for tactical and strategic reasons, FoI should be treated as a
technical "delivery problem" or linked to wider human rights and transparency
issues. The conclusion discusses whether FoI really helps to build democratic
practices, or whether it is better considered to be an outcome of them.

Key Topics Covered:

* Introduction: the discourse of FoI
* the Lippmann critique of the Omnicompetent Citizen?
* The role of information in modernisation and development discourse
* FoI comes to Africa and the developing world
* The relationship between demand and compliance
* A typology of state information: the personal and the political
* Models of compliance and their application in the developing world
* the Roberts-Snell model of administrative compliance
* Roberts-Snell applied to African situations
* The problem of capacity
* FoI as legislative act or change management process
* Constraints of demand: the problem of discourse
* Bourdieus theory of political discourse
* Polysemic discourse and language in African countries
* The language of legitimacy and exoglossia
* The problem of FoI and human rights discourse
* is FoI a real human rights issue?
* Relationship between FoI and transparency/democratic governance
* Conclusion
* is FoI a creation or the creator of democratic practice?

For more information visit
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/287901/freedom_of_informa

Research and Markets
Laura Wood
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press@researchandmarkets.com
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