Context: Donor projects assumed legislative transparency reforms could work like democracies, where voters pressure officials. But our new field experiment shows otherwise.
Methodology: We conducted a randomized trial on Vietnamese delegates during query sessions to test the impact of transparency interventions in an authoritarian context.
Findings: The results reveal that while transparency didn't directly improve delegate performance, it did lead to decreased participation and harmed reelection prospects among delegates exposed to higher treatment intensity.
Implications: These findings highlight a crucial gap between democratic contexts where transparency works well, and authoritarian systems. Our research suggests interventions must consider the fundamentally different functions of parliaments in non-democratic regimes.
