پارادوکس حکومت باز و نزول کیفیت حکمرانی مطالعه موردی: کشورهای جنوب آسیا

ABSTRACT
Today, it is accepted that information and communication technology plays a very important and fundamental role in economic growth, social development, and the cohesion of cultural identity. Entering the information age has also caused changes in all areas of politics and consequently political systems, and open government has been introduced as an alternative to existing systems. However, some research has addressed the issue that open government, if the government bodies are not reviewed to promote citizen participation, will be a new tool at the disposal of non-democratic systems. Accordingly, the main objective of the present study is to examine the intersection of open government with performance indicators of government bodies (executive, legislative, and judicial) as well as the democracy index, and the hypothesis has been put forward that promoting open government does not necessarily mean improving the performance conditions of government bodies and the democracy index. The sample studied is from countries in the South Asian region, and the research method is trend research. The United Nations and the Economist indicators have been used as research variables. The results of the study indicate that the status of South Asian countries in open government has not necessarily meant their movement towards democracy and improving citizen access through promoting the performance of government bodies. Afghanistan has the worst situation among the countries in the region after the Taliban came to power, while Nepal has the best situation in open government and government performance indicators. Also, the democracy index has been declining in all countries studied.
Extended Abstract
Introduction
The information age has caused changes in all aspects of human life, including politics, and as a result, political systems have new concepts and indicators, the main basis of which is to provide simple, accurate and efficient access for citizens to monitor governments and improve bio-social conditions. While information technology has revolutionized the general process of human life, it has also subjected the political field to new aspects of concepts. Among the most important political concepts formed in the political field affected by the information age are the concepts of open government and closed government, which were proposed in the first decade of the 21st century. The division of political systems into two groups, with open government and those without it (closed government), is the achievement of the information age, which is influenced by Karl Popper's division of closed and open society and emphasizes that modern political systems are designed based on the opinion of citizens. Moreover, for this reason, their monitoring of their political system should be strengthened through the achievements of the information age; however, the World Wide Web weakened the old media and software companies, revealing the enormous power of a new approach known as Web 2. Based on this, open government is the ruling doctrine, which believes that citizens have the right to access the documents and procedures of government bodies consisting of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches to provide effective public supervision. Based on this, the current research aims to investigate the state of open government and its achievements in South Asian countries. As a geographical and geopolitical region, South Asia has been increasingly important in recent years.
 
Methodology
According to the goals and questions of the research, the trend analysis method has been used to examine the data. Trend analysis examines trends and refers to their historical and temporal continuity. The regular changes in data and phenomena are evaluated over time to recognize them. One of the characteristics of trends is that they represent changes in a group of data or phenomena and also represent changes in a period in such a way that those data or phenomena have changed and their status is different from the past. Each period depends on the subject of the process and its field of knowledge and may be short for one phenomenon and long for another. Another characteristic of trends is that they can be used to simplify phenomena' complexity; that is, a phenomenon is expressed in a simplified form in a process. Also, it is based on the premise that changes in the world have historical continuity. Pearson's correlation test has also been used to determine a significant relationship between the open government index and other indices.
 
Results and discussion
Examining the process of matching open government with other indicators for the existence of correlation and influence has been done in two ways: firstly, the situation of each country will be investigated, and then the general situation of the investigated countries.
Afghanistan: The open government index and its technological facilities are correlated with the state of the legislature and judiciary.
Bangladesh: The open government index and its technological facilities are correlated with the state of the executive and judiciary.
India: The index of open government and available technological facilities is correlated only with the state of the executive branch.
Nepal: The open government index and the technological facilities available in it correlate with the state of the executive and judiciary.
Pakistan: The open government index and the technological facilities available in it are correlated with the state of the executive and legislative powers.
Sri Lanka: Index of open government and technological facilities available in it is correlated only with the state of the executive branch.
A very important point is the significant and negative relationship of all the countries studied in the open government index and the democracy index, and this means that the improvement of the open government index, which is the improvement of new tools, has led to more suppression of democracy in South Asian countries. The test of the hypothesis of the effect of the open government index on the democracy index shows that there is no direct relationship between them, and the increase in the open government score in all the countries under review has caused a decrease in the democracy index.
 
Conclusion
Open government and improving the position of countries have become increasingly important. For this reason, the indicators and dimensions examined regarding its effectiveness should reflect the achievements of open government and not only measure the technical and infrastructural facilities of the countries. However, they should also correctly show the government's underlying processes. Open government ratings are maturing in this direction, so they have focused on evaluating users' use and, therefore, measuring the quality of government actions.
In general, the examination of the state of South Asian countries based on the open government index and its association as the state of improving the access of citizens and the efficiency of government institutions is misleading; Because the survey conducted indicated that this index does not achieve achievements such as the state of democracy and the improvement of the efficiency of government institutions in the access of citizens. It should be acknowledged that this index is also potentially dangerous because its name gives any political system a democratic appearance, which is contradictory in reality. Therefore, open government should be truly related to achievements in improving the status of citizens. We can evaluate its real effects only by ranking other indicators that are considered the achievement of open government.
 
Funding
There is no funding support.
 
Authors’ Contribution
Authors contributed equally to the conceptualization and writing of the article. All of the authors approved thecontent of the manuscript and agreed on all aspects of the work declaration of competing interest none.
 
Conflict of Interest
Authors declared no conflict of interest.
 
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all the scientific consultants of this paper.