Lack of government compliance jeopardizes performance and prospects for recent information access schemes, especially at the local level. Encouragingly, academics and multilateral initiatives are beginning to examine the determinants of local transparency compliance, although they have focused predominantly on active forms of transparency (such as dissemination of information on the web), especially in higher-income democracies, and with the use of aggregate measures in accordance with transparency compliance. We contribute to this literature by shifting the focus to passive transparency (responsiveness to citizens' requests) - where compliance gaps in the latest access to information schemes tend to be more acute - and we draw critical distinctions between the determinants of compliance in the law (de jure compliance) versus in practice (de facto compliance). By using a new set of data on municipal transparency compliance in Brazil, we identified substantial differences in factors related to de jure and de facto compliance. These distinctions offer lessons for policy-based efforts that can help take root in new transparency measures.

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 Variáveis determinantes para cumprimento à Lei de Acesso à Informação nos municípios brasileiros