Nextgov.com recently posted a short article on a ForeSee Results new study indicating that online government transparency efforts may be increasing trust in government.  ForeSee reports that their survey included some 30,000 folks, a clearly respectable number.

While increased transparency positively influencing citizen trust in government is not only intuitive but also accords well with traditional political philosophies, I wonder if the phenomenon would hold true in different situations.

A friend working on the ground in Afghanistan recently told me that while the younger generation in that country are tech savvy and Facebooking and using other contemporary tools, the power structures there are rigid and personality driven with little accountability and much corruption.  So I wonder what innovative government transparency would look like in countries that are still trying to establish governance and rule of law.  Ushahidi-type apps?

More importantly, would citizen trust in governing structures follow the same curve with respect to transparency as it does here in the US?  Would it be a steeper curve?  A shallower one?