Pakanati, Rajdeep2023-08-212023-08-212012https://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/33196The study of the proliferation of freedom of information laws around the world has only recently come to attention of political scientists. The extant studies are dominated by the legal fraternity, which only looks at the content of the laws, depriving them of their context. Especially problematic is the lack of a empirical and analytical work which looks at the <italic>process</italic> through which these laws came to fruition. This dissertation attempts to capture the particular process that defined the adoption of these laws and uncover the politics that went into the law-making. This is carried out by undertaking a systematic comparative study of the processes that went into the adoption of FOI laws in India, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The dissertation specifically looks at two levels - international input and domestic input, and finds that the domestic input was pivotal in the overall process. The study draws on the insights of international <italic>norms</italic> and policy diffusion to analyze the adoption of FOI laws in these countries. Moreover, the study makes a contribution to the study of norms by proposing that we need to look at norms as being applicable to a <italic>single-issue</italic> or as being <italic>cross-cutting</italic> in their content. Three major findings emerge from the comparative study. First, the adoption of FOI laws can be understood by looking at <italic>Freedom of Information as a single-issue norm</italic>, which falls under the <italic>cross-cutting issue of transparency</italic>. Second, the opportunity structure to promote the adoption of FOI laws was quite significant during a transitory moment, after a change in government, as in the case of India and the United Kingdom, or during the transition moment', from the apartheid government to democratic representative government in South Africa. Third, the <italic>institutionalization</italic> of the civil society actors, who emerged as a broad based coalition during the adoption process, but have since then, taken the shape of formal organizations.Social sciencesAccountabilityFreedom of informationInternational normsRight to informationTransparencyThesis1440043909https://doi.org/10.58088/qwq0-33952017-10-30en