Can Freedom of Information Help Fix Democracy?

The last two decades saw a real upsurge in democracy. Record numbers were witnessed in Africa and democracy aid driven agencies congratulated themselves that they finally had succeeded in getting the continent to take its place within the league of democratic nation states! However, the news across the world (including Africa) is not so rejoicing. Hard based evidence points to the fact that democracy is in decline and that authoritarian regimes are on the rise (see Larry Diamond, Francis Fukuyama, Thomas Carothers and Marc Plattner).
The questions that perhaps one should ask is why is democracy failing to inspire and what could be done to fix it? In fact, one of the major shortcomings of democracy is its highly prescriptive approach. What we need is a more proactive and deliberative method, where citizens are able to experience and experiment with it. Here notions of freedom and right to information are considered as a necessary condition for the quality of democracy.