ABSTRACT Transparency laws have proliferated worldwide: between 1990 and 2010, 76 countries promulgated laws or ordinances on the freedom or right to information. By examining the domestic and global processes involved in the passage of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTIA) in India, this article locates the global trend within the local context. It argues that the RTIA signifies institutional change because it replaced the norm of secrecy—nested and perpetuated within the Indian state since colonial times—with the norm of openness. But was this change a result of an endogenous process, or did exogenous factors—such as the global policy stimulus toward transparency and accountability or the “good governance” agenda of international financial institutions—play an instrumental role? The existing scholarly literature argues that international influence was “marginal” and the process of institutional change was largely “homegrown.” By considering historical archival material and internal government documents, this article attempts to unravel the process of norm diffusion from the global to the local and to determine how much exogenous factors and global norms affected institutional change in India.

中文翻译：

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理清全球与本地的联系：以印度《信息权法》为例

摘要 透明度法在世界范围内激增：1990 年至 2010 年间，76 个国家颁布了关于信息自由或信息权的法律或法令。本文通过考察印度通过 2005 年信息权法案 (RTIA) 所涉及的国内和全球进程，在当地背景下定位全球趋势。它认为 RTIA 意味着制度变革，因为它用开放规范取代了自殖民时代以来在印度国家内嵌套和永久存在的保密规范。但这种变化是否是内生过程的结果，抑或外在因素——如全球政策刺激透明度和问责制或国际金融机构的“善治”议程——发挥了重要作用？现有的学术文献认为，国际影响力是“边际的”，制度变迁的过程在很大程度上是“本土的”。通过考虑历史档案材料和政府内部文件，本文试图解开规范从全球传播到地方的过程，并确定外生因素和全球规范在多大程度上影响了印度的制度变迁。