Access to information (ATI) policies are often praised for enhancing transparency, accountability, and trust in public institutions, yet evidence that they lead to better governance outcomes is strikingly mixed. We argue that ATI policies do not improve institutional performance unless accompanied by mechanisms for preventing officials from avoiding compliance with information requests that could reveal poor performance.

The eleventh annual OxPeace Conference aims to explore some of the challenges to peace, and responses to those challenges, that arise from the ascendancy of human beings on planet Earth and the consequent impact on our environment.

OxPeace suggests as a working definition of ‘peace’: ‘Human security and human flourishing, in a sustainable environment, with the constructive management of conflict.’

Conference Dinner on Friday 17 May. Drinks will be served from 19.00 and dinner at 19.30.

Dinner tickets are £40 for non-students, but £20 if you are a student and among the first 15 students to register, full price thereafter. To honour this year’s theme, the dinner will be vegetarian – but wine is included!

Dinner speaker: Brian Lander, Deputy Director, World Food Programme, formerly at UNHCR.

Payment for the dinner must be made in advance, payment instructions will be sent to you.

This talk will focus on patterns of protest in Hong Kong during the last three decades or so and the tightening of political controls in the city over the course of the last several years. The presenter, who has been visiting Hong Kong regularly since 1987, will draw on his work as a specialist in the history of social movements and also his observations during his many trips to Hong Kong, including one that took place while the drama of the 2014 Umbrella Movement was underway.

Does campaign contribution limits reduce the influence of donors over elected officials and kickbacks for donors? Using a regression discontinuity design that exploits institutional rules determining contribution limits based on registered voters thresholds, we find that looser campaign limits affects donors participation: it reduces the number of donors per candidate and increases the average donations received by the winner of the election.

Lord Philip Norton of Louth, Professor of Government at the University of Hull will deliver the third Bingham Lecture in Constitutional Studies on 16 May at 5.30 p.m. in the lecture theatre in the Manor Road Building Oxford, OX1 3UQ. The title of the lecture will be ‘Is the House of Commons Too Powerful?’ A reception will follow.

Jenny Andersson holds a PhD in eco¬nomic history from Uppsala University in Sweden. She is currently a scholar with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and based at Sciences Po in Paris, where she also co directs the Max Planck Sciences Po Center. She has worked on the intellectual history of contemporary social democracy, and more recently, on the history of future research and concepts of the future in the post war era.