• Transparency

Access to Information and Transparency

This paper demonstrates that Mozambique has a distinctive profile of uncritical citizenship in which most Mozambicans do not express any opinion on their government and those who do overrate its performance. It also explores the extent to which this uncritical citizenship is a function of Mozambique’s ‘low information society’ characterised by:

• low level of political Information or ability to provide a range of basic political facts and the identity of key leaders
• low ability or willingness to offer an assessment of the democratic regime and the state
• low ability or willingness to be critical or negative even while giving an assessment of the government’s performance
• low demand or commitment for democracy
• high satisfaction with the supply of democracy.
  

The authors find a close relationship between ‘uncritical citizenship’ and the overall information deficit. While lack of formal education in Mozambique has affected the people’s ability to acquire and process information, the flow of information itself is low and highly restricted. Lack of access to the formal news media and informal sources of political information has also contributed to the information deficit. Interaction between citizens and elected representatives is rare because of the provincial list proportional system of elections in which elected representatives have a high incentive to please their powerful party bosses and a low incentive to engage with their voters.

Extent to which people are critical of the government has some relationship with the cultural values, perception of political fear and economic and political development, which are among the alternative explanatory factors considered.

The paper concludes that the quality of Mozambique’s fledgling democracy will rest on the speed and degree to which the government and donors are able to expand educational opportunities and access to news media in order to build critical skills among the citizens. It also advocates reforms in the electoral system.

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