About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

58 Admin. L. Rev. 85 (2006)
The Global Explosion of Freedom of Information Laws

handle is hein.journals/admin58 and id is 93 raw text is: THE GLOBAL EXPLOSION OF FREEDOM OF
INFORMATION LAWS
JOHN M. ACKERMAN & IRMA E. SANDOVAL-BALLESTEROS*
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction  .............................................................................................  85
I. Theory and Impact of Freedom of Information Laws ................. 88
II. Freedom of Information Laws in Practice .................................. 93
A .  W hat Is a  FOI Law? .............................................................   93
B .  G lobal Statistics  ....................................................................  95
C. Variation in Content of FOI Laws ........................................ 99
1.  C overage  .........................................................................   99
2.  E xem ptions  ........................................................................ 10 1
3.  E nforcem ent ....................................................................... 105
4.  E ase  of  A ccess  ................................................................... 108
D. Categories of Countries with FOI Laws .................................. 109
E.   Comparative   Historical Lessons .............................................. 115
1.  FOI Laws Are Political Creatures ...................................... 115
2.  The  Centrality  of Civil Society  .......................................... 119
3.  The Role  of International Actors ....................................... 121
III.  Challenges  for  the  Future ................................................................ 123
INTRODUCTION
A global wave of innovation in administrative law has gone virtually
unnoticed by the community of legal scholars. Twenty years ago only ten
nations had laws that specifically guaranteed the rights of citizens to access
* John M. Ackerman is Professor and Coordinator of the Research Program on
Accountability, Legality, and the Rule of Law at the Latin American Faculty of Social
Sciences in Mexico City (FLACSO-Mexico). Irma E. Sandoval-Ballesteros is Professor and
Director of the Laboratory for the Documentation and Analysis of Corruption
& Transparency at the Institute for Social Research of the National Autonomous University
of Mexico (IIS-UNAM). The authors would like to thank Bruce Ackerman, Susan Rose-
Ackerman, David Banisar, Pedro Salazar, Mauricio Merino, Ricardo Becerra, and Netzai
Sandoval for their helpful comments on previous versions of this Article as well as
Mexico's Federal Institute for Access to Public Information for funding support.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most