This morning, Utrecht School of Government researcher Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen was awarded a doctorate for his dissertation on transparency and trust.
In his dissertation, Grimmelikhuijsen delved into the complexities of a widely held expectation of transparency: that citizens will trust their government more if they have more information about it. In order to study this question, Grimmelikhuijsen chose for the methodological interesting angle of an experimental setting, working with self-designed transparency websites as templates. The research was co-supervised by Open Government in the EU team member dr. Albert Meijer, while prof. Deirdre Curtin of our team was on the reading committee. The Ministry of Home Affairs has already shown interest in the dissertation and will be discussing its implications for policy during its next ministerial meeting. Grimmelikhuijsen will continue to investigate the impact of government transparency in a post-doctoral programme at the USG.
A press statement about the dissertation can be found here.