Barriers to transparency in Bhutan's public administration: A new typology of opacity

Abstract

AbstractIn democratic emerging countries, transparency can play an important role in reducing corruption, but only if certain barriers are overcome. This investigation contributes to transparency theory by studying the barriers to transparency and proposing a typology consisting of five barriers that lead to opacity. With focus on the public administration tasked to control corruption in the mining sector of Bhutan, we conducted 98 semi‐structured interviews within seven different stakeholder groups in different regions of Bhutan to determine the barriers to transparency in fighting corruption. A qualitative analysis technique revealed first‐ and second‐order themes resulting in five forms of opacity: idiosyncratic (nature of the industry and corruption); systemic (adequacy of information management system); deliberate (willingness to exercise control); organizational (role and process ambiguity); and capacity (sufficient resources to control). This analysis of the mining sector, a high corruption industry, in a unique, low corruption democratic emerging country, Bhutan, provides practical implications to policy‐makers attempting to improve transparency, and hence, reduce corruption. Policy and managerial implications of this research include paying more attention to the national control agencies that could be improved by heeding the five key factors that we have highlighted.