World Bank’s Let’s Talk Data: Can Data Transparency Lead to Political Instability?

Advocates for economic development often call for greater transparency. But what does transparency really mean? What are its consequences? Join us for a discussion on how transparency in the form of disseminating economic data can lead to impacts on major political phenomena such as mass protest, the survival of dictatorships, democratic stability, and economic performance.

The authors of a new book titled “Information, Democracy, and Autocracy: Economic Transparency and Political (In)Stability” will share with us how increasing economic data transparency under different forms of government (democracy, autocracy) leads to wildly differing results. In democracies, transparency can attract investment and increase resilience; in autocracies, transparency can result in political instability in the form of mass unrest and the creation of new despotic regimes.