A simple definition of administrative burden is that it is an individual’s experience of a policy’s implementation as onerous. A more specific definition is that administrative burdens are the learning, psychological, and compliance costs that citizens experience in their interactions with government.
Herd, Pamela; Moynihan, Donald P.. Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means (p. 22). (Function). Kindle Edition.
The term administrative burden may evoke images of business regulation or basic bureaucratic encounters, such as renewing a driver’s license. But any context in which the state regulates private behavior or structures how individuals seek public services is a venue in which the state may impose burdens on its citizens. We focus on the costs that people encounter when they search for information about public services (learning costs), comply with rules and requirements (compliance costs), and experience the stresses, loss of autonomy, or stigma that come from such encounters (psychological costs). All policies that require citizens to engage with the state will, to varying degrees, create such frictions.
Ultimately, administrative burdens are the fine print of the social contract between citizens and their government. They are the nuts and bolts of policy design. The presence of administrative burdens makes the difference as to whether government is experienced as accessible or opaque, simple or bewildering, respectful or antagonistic.
Those who believe that government can act as a progressive force for good in people’s lives need to understand the role that administrative burdens play. Many have pushed hard for the expansion of programs and policies that reduce growing inequality. But if those programs bury people in paperwork and fill them with frustration, it undermines not only policy outcomes, but also people’s faith in the capacity of government to do anything right. These burdens might seem like the dull minutiae of administration compared with the exciting possibilities in designing a new program, but policy designs are not self-executing. Programs must be implemented.
First, burdens are consequential—they make a difference in our lives. The right to vote or access an abortion, or the ability to receive a needed state benefit may depend on the burdens we face. Second, administrative burdens are distributive. They affect some groups more than others, and in doing so, often reinforce inequalities in society. Third, burdens, like public policies themselves, are constructed. Administrative burdens are the product of deliberate choice occurring via political processes and a function of basic administrative capacity.
Herd, Pamela; Moynihan, Donald P.. Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means (p. 3). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Administrative burdens are pervasive and consequential in terms of the costs that citizens bear and, in turn, how those costs influence citizens’ perceptions of government.
It is a lot of work to be poor and disabled. In a country where health care is not a right, the Medicaid redeterminations reinforce the precarious state of marginalized communities in relationship to the state. When I go through this process, I am angered as I think of all the people who need assistance trying to understand the form, collecting information, and physically completing it on time. The administrative burden, access barriers, and emotional toll it takes to jump through these hoops for survival is cruel and counterproductive.
Medicaid expansion saves lives. … If we don’t fight back, the “great unwinding” could become the great unraveling of the safety net as we know it.
I have faith, though, that people will save Medicaid once again, as they have with past efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. When the odds seem overwhelmingly stacked against us, I recall the phrase, “They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.” We will rise again.
To add another layer of difficulty, the process for obtaining SSI benefits is baffling and as discouraging as possible.
A core approach that Republicans have here is tying everything up in administrative burdens and red tape to make things hard,” said Ben HsuBorger, US advocacy director for #MEAction, a nonprofit advocating for people with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Some of them will be too sick to fight for an exemption from the work rules, HsuBorger predicts.
The Deceptive Phrase Behind Trump’s Medicaid Purge – Mother Jones
Requiring proof of identification from every member of her household was an excessive and inappropriate expectation. Who carries that kind of information with them? How do they manage that with children in the household? I was frustrated that this happened, but requiring documentation or proof of need is a longstanding tradition in emergency food assistance. Our desire to make sure that people really “deserve” the help motivates demands for proof of income, address, or other evidence that proves a household struggles with hunger.
The more information organizations require of their clients, the more people they deter from participating.
It is a good thing for the quality of government that progressives are paying more attention to administrative burden. In my book with Pam Herd on the topic, we bemoaned the fact that conservatives seemed to understand the power of burdens, but have used that understanding to make government dysfunctional. Progressives, on the other hand, were just not paying attention. Instead, they focus on building new programs rather than making sure the ones we already have work. And they fail to think about burdens in policy design, proposing narrowly targeted programs that prove difficult to implement.
The Biden Administration Is Taking Administrative Burdens Seriously
We argue that those who are least advantaged tend to face more administrative burdens, even though they have fewer resources to manage and overcome them.
Burdens reinforce inequalities in access to rights, including the most basic of citizenship in a democracy: the right to vote.
Policies targeted toward the poor are more likely to be burdensome relative to universal policies that all use.
First, citizens are better off when public programs are designed to be simple, accessible, and respectful of the citizens they encounter.
Learning costs arise from engaging in search processes to collect information about public services: Are there services that can fulfill unmet needs? Would one qualify for them? What are the requirements for the application process? Psychological costs include the stigma of applying for or participating in a program with negative characterizations, a sense of loss of personal power or autonomy in interactions with the state, or the stresses and frustrations of dealing with administrative processes. Compliance costs are the material burdens of following administrative rules and requirements. This is the time lost waiting in line, completing forms or providing documentation of status. It is the money spent on hiring an accountant to do your taxes, or the fees immigrants pay to process paperwork.
We argue, though, that some programs are implemented to be burdensome, that the burden is a deliberate mechanism to undermine the original policy goal.
Reducing staff and increasing administrative burden creates denials of service and artificial scarcity.
Disabled people know administrative burden and artificial scarcity all too well.
Further Reading
- Neoliberalism
- Conservatism
- Resentment
- Southern Strategy
- Lost Cause
- Segregationist Discourse
- Meritocracy Myth
- Moral Panic
- Lowering the Bar
- Minority Stress
- Racial Weathering
- Policing
- Toxic Masculinity
- Bodily Autonomy
- Biological Essentialism
- Stigma
- Shame
- Ableism
- Eugenics
- Administrative Burden
- R-Word
- Empire of Normality
- Autism Grievance Parent
- Power
- Privilege
- Precarity
- Oligarchy
- Sadopopulism
- Rot Economy
- Fantasy Economy
- Metric Fixation
- Objectivity
- Tech Ethics
- Ableism
- Neuronormativity
- Empire of Normality
- Pathology Paradigm
- Behaviorism
- Eugenics
- Deficit Ideology
- Sameness-Based Fairness
- ”Better get used to it.”
- Inspiration Exploitation
- School-Induced Anxiety
- Toxic Positivity
- Resilience
- Burnout
- The Road to Neuronormative Domination.
- Education Technology and the New Behaviorism
- We’ve Turned Classrooms Into a Hell for Neurodivergence
- 14 Obstacles to Neurodiversity Affirming Practice
- Double Empathy Problem
- Double Empathy Extreme Problem
- Triple Empathy Problem
- Disability Double-bind
- Performative Neurodiversity (Neurodiversity Lite)
- Pathology Lite
- Empire of Normality
- Harm Reduction Theater
