Uncovering motivations behind open government policy: a policy diffusion approach

Why do states commit to open government reforms amid growing concerns over democratic backsliding? Understanding this question can illuminate how governments attempt to navigate democratic erosion through open governance. Yet, the motivations driving state participation in global initiatives like the Open Government Partnership (OGP) remain underexplored. Prior research has examined definitions, adoption patterns and diffusion mechanisms, but rarely investigates why states themselves choose to pursue such reforms. These gaps have fuelled competing interpretations: some scholars view open government as a sincere effort to counter democratic erosion, while others criticize it as ‘open-washing’. Methodologically, the field has also lacked scalable tools capable of capturing nuanced motivational claims across countries. This study addresses these gaps by analysing policy documents from all 75 OGP national member countries using a hybrid method that combines natural language processing with qualitative validation. Drawing on policy diffusion and institutional theories of state behaviour, we identify four primary motivational logics: coercion, mimesis, attraction and competition. Our findings reveal that these motives often co-occur, forming layered repertoires of rationalist, instrumental and socializing justifications. This article challenges rigid models of state behaviour and advances policy diffusion theory by treating motivations as empirically observable discursive constructs rather than merely inferred from structural conditions. These findings also inform open government scholarship and practices by providing analytical tools to better interpret and support adaptive reform efforts.