Does compliance imply openness? An institutional analysis of open government reforms in three municipalities in Chile

Does compliance with open government reforms imply openness? Based on an institutional framework, this article analyses the implementation of two open government reforms – the Access to Information and Citizen Participation laws – in three Chilean municipalities. The results suggest that how formal rules interact with informal strategies could explain the different outcomes of open government reforms and that compliance does not necessarily lead to openness. In contrast, the complexity of formal and informal interaction, defined by the strength of formal laws and their convergence with local informality, can produce counterproductive results on local governance.