Many studies have shown that individuals who interact with government programs subsequently participate in politics at levels different from before, whether higher or lower. While most prior work examines the effect of policy recipiency, or program administration in one geographic location or at one snapshot in time, I study how the administration of Medicaid, a federal program administered by states, varies over time and by place, and how its variation in administration affects mass-level voter turnout. I argue that there are two highly salient sites of contact with the administrative state when considering effects on voter turnout: government programs and elections. I theorize that administrative burden from these sites creates interpretive effects on both those with direct public program experience and those whose experience is indirect, which shapes the likelihood of voting. Using a generalized differences-in-differences design and applying my separate, original measures of Medicaid and electoral burdens, I find that having a higher level of Medicaid burden resulted in a small but significant decrease in county-level turnout in recent national elections, net of Medicaid expansion status, burdens associated with registering to vote and voting, and other factors. These results imply that contact with the administrative state, via government program administration and elections, is a critical way in which policies shape mass-level political participation.

This study investigates how Ukrainian asylum seekers in Switzerland experience administrative burdens during their early integration under temporary protection status S. Drawing on the concepts of bureaucratic self-efficacy and social capital, it examines how individual and social resources shape perceived administrative burden. Data were collected through a survey distributed via a Zurich-based NGO’s Telegram channel, which also included open-ended responses providing additional context to participants’ experiences. Findings show that higher bureaucratic self-efficacy significantly reduces perceived burden, while support from third-sector organizations – representing linking social capital – also plays a critical role. In contrast, bonding capital (e.g., family and friends) and general social media use have limited impact. The study contributes to both public administration and migration research by refining the conceptual understanding of social capital, highlighting the value of intermediaries in public service delivery, and emphasizing the importance of designing accessible systems supported by institutional and civil society actors.

Sludge is one of the most important yet underappreciated problems in modern society. Examples of sludge include unnecessarily complex paperwork requirements, hard-to-navigate documents and websites, long waiting time, and unfriendly or confusing staff interactions. However, little is known about whether some people are more vulnerable to and less accepting of some types of sludge than others. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey with 1,591 participants from Ireland, we show that people report being particularly vulnerable to outdated websites with broken links, unfriendly staff interactions, complex documents laden with jargon, and hard-to-navigate websites. These are also the types of sludge that are least acceptable. Less vulnerability is reported to long waiting times and requirements about having to provide private information. We find only minor differences in sludge perceptions depending on whether the sludge emerges in the public or the private sector. Moreover, people with poor mental health report being more vulnerable to and less accepting of sludge. Self-reported administrative literacy is related to less reported vulnerability, and the tendency to procrastinate and a lack of time and mental energy predict more reported vulnerability to sludge. Administrative literacy and a lack of mental energy also predict acceptability of sludge.

This article posits that the multi-level governance literature can benefit from administrative burden theory if scholars are interested in understanding under which conditions policy implementation fails. To support this argument, we build on these two bodies of research to examine how implicit welfare rescaling – where the central government expands its role in a previously devolved policy – may increase administrative burdens for claimants, and to what extent local welfare systems can help to mitigate these burdens despite lacking coordination. To address these research aims, we assess the implementation of the “Ingreso Mínimo Vital,” a national minimum income scheme introduced in Spain within a fragmented regional system. Qualitative fieldwork with frontline professionals and policy experts shows that welfare rescaling heightened claimants’ administrative burdens due to inter-institutional misfit among governance levels. This imposed substantial learning, compliance, and psychological costs on claimants, making frontline professionals essential for guiding them through these challenges.

The Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan promises to help low-income parents, especially women, participate in the economy. But even under this plan, care will be too expensive for many families. Several provinces offer targeted subsidies to reduce fees—unfortunately, these benefits are often hard to access and their popularity with voters is unclear. Using a pre-registered survey experiment (N=821), this research note investigates support for a hypothetical child care supplement to help low-income families. Overall, we find strong support for such an initiative, but little enthusiasm to pay for it through new income taxes. We then manipulate the ease of accessing this benefit. We find little evidence that burdensome child care benefits are more popular than easily accessible benefits. If anything, burdensome benefits reduce support. We then briefly consider how partisanship influences support. We conclude with timely recommendations for government and discuss the need for accessible child care benefits.

The US public is mostly ignorant about basic immigration knowledge. While various attempts to correct misperceptions have generally failed to change people’s minds about the issue, it is possible that this failure has been the result of not providing relevant information. We argue that informing the public about the difficulty of the legal immigration admission process is an effective, perspective-changing way to raise support for more open immigration policies. We test and confirm this hypothesis using a nationally representative US survey experiment (N = 1000) that informs respondents about US immigration’s administrative burdens and restrictions through short verifiable narratives. We also provide the first evidence of the widespread ignorance about the immigration process across diverse political and demographic groups. Our results suggest that providing a better understanding of the immigration process’ difficulty has more promise to change public policy preferences than challenging skeptics’ crystallized beliefs about immigration’s effects or numbers.

Among the factors identified to account for non-take-up of social benefits, there has been limited research on ‘process costs’, particularly regarding the impact of geographic access. Using Israeli data on field office openings from 1993 to 2021, this paper investigates the impact of geographic access on the take-up of the five largest social security programs in Israel. Based on staggered openings and closings of social security field offices, we find that geographic access has no significant impact on the take-up of either automatic enrollment programs, such as child allowances, or non-automatic programs, such as disability benefits. These findings suggest that the effect of geographic access on the take-up of social benefits may have been overstated in previous studies. We propose the following hypothesis to explain the surprising findings: If enhanced geographic access is driven by political favoritism, opening of new service points may lead to the misallocation of resources and, in effect, increase administrative burdens, thereby undermining rather than improving the take-up of social benefits.

Le fardeau administratif renvoie au phénomène selon lequel la mise en œuvre des politiques publiques et, plus généralement, les interactions avec l’État, sont coûteuses et difficiles. Chaque personne est en effet confrontée à des coûts d'apprentissage lorsqu'elle acquiert de l'information sur les programmes et services publics, à des coûts de conformité lorsqu'elle tente de satisfaire à leurs règles, et à des coûts psychologiques (stress, etc.) lorsqu'elle interagit avec ceux-ci. Cette littérature, presque exclusivement anglophone, s'est développée à un rythme effréné. Cette synthèse critique fait le bilan de ces récents développements et propose une discussion articulée autour de trois thèmes : 1) Que sont les fardeaux administratifs et quels enjeux soulèvent-ils? ; 2) Quelles sont les sources des fardeaux? ; et 3) Quelles en sont les conséquences distributives et politiques? Des pistes de recherche future sont proposées pour chacun de ces thèmes.

Passported benefits are additional benefits provided to individual or households based on a previous eligibility to a “primary” social security benefit. Although passported benefits should be easier to claim, in reality the claiming process is often cumbersome and results in low take-up. Drawing on an Israeli case study, we offer a conceptual framework to categorize and analyse the varieties of passported benefits along five dimensions: the eligibility role of primary cash benefits; automation level; legal status; type of service delivery; and the degree of decentralization. The administrative burden literature is employed to make sense of the paradox of passported benefits becoming a site for administrative burden. Using our conceptual framework and drawing on interviews with officials and claimants, we demonstrate why some passported benefits are more user-friendly while others tend to become administratively burdensome.

The non-take-up of public services has the potential to undermine civil rights and deepen social inequality. Looking at the case of the Youth Community College Programme in China, an innovation in governance to facilitate community integration of the migrant population by providing free education, this study finds that the targeted disadvantaged groups are systematically excluded due to the disproportionate imposition of various administrative burdens on them. We propose that an interaction mechanism – which we term “selective affinity” – between the policy process and individuals’ human capital leads to this unintended outcome. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the causal mechanisms underlying vulnerable people's non-take-up of public services, while highlighting an example of dysfunctional state–society interaction and a mechanism for the reproduction of social inequality under authoritarianism in China.

Many families, despite need and eligibility, struggle to meet programme deadlines to retain critical benefits. When families fail to complete programme recertification on time, they lose needed support. While scholars have tested behavioural theories like chunking, implementation intention, and loss framing to promote programme uptake, less is known about how well-designed communications can promote continuity through successful recertification, especially where recertification entails a significant administrative burden. Further, scant evidence guides how best to frame recertification deadlines. In a randomised trial with government partners (n = 3,539), we find that sending a reminder letter informed by these behavioural theories increased the number of families maintaining participation by 14 per cent. Further, anchoring people to a deadline month may suffice to thread the motivational needle: overcoming procrastination without lowering self-efficacy by anchoring them to a specific day. Adopting the most effective letter in Washington, DC, would lead 766 more families to participate uninterrupted each year.

Drawing on interviews with disability and income support beneficiaries, the article examines the encounters of Israeli citizens with the National Insurance Institute. Using the administrative burden conceptualisation, our analysis highlights three known types of costs: compliance, learning and psychological. The current study provides further conceptualisation of these burdens by unfolding the role of three concrete elements involved in generating these burdens: waiting, communication breakdowns, and administrative errors. These elements are discussed in terms of their contribution to a better understanding of bureaucratic procedures that constitute administrative burdens in the context of the benefit claiming process.