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Since 2010, the UK government has transformed social security administration using digital technology and automated instruments to create and deliver a single working-age benefit known as Universal Credit (UC). Social policy scholars have given much attention to the key policy tenets of UC but engaged less with leading aspects of automated and digital delivery and their relationship to different forms of administrative burdens for UC recipients. This article addresses this empirical and conceptual gap by drawing on administrative burdens literature to analyse empirical data from forty-four interviews with UC recipients. We conclude by highlighting three costs: temporal, financial, and emotional. These costs illustrate the political dimensions of technical features of UC, as they affect accountability procedures and paths to legal entitlements that have bearings on certain claimants’ rights.

Administrative burdens are the frictions that people face in their encounters with public services, leading to meaningful costs that include learning, compliance, and psychological costs. We offer evidence that burdens are a key source and consequence of inequality, resulting in disparate outcomes in people’s access to basic rights. We also detail how these outcomes are patterned by targeting, federalism, bureaucratic pathologies, and the growing use of the private sector and tax system to deliver social welfare benefits. Throughout, we highlight recent and novel contributions, including empirical research in this double issue, that have helped clarify how and why administrative burdens shape inequality. Burdens have not received the political, policy, or research priority that is commensurate with their magnitude or impact on individuals. We conclude by arguing that we need a coherent language and framework to recognize and, where appropriate, reduce burdens across a wide array of policy domains.

The article examines public administration reform (PAR) in Bulgaria and the main factors that shaped the reform agenda and dynamics. PAR is examined along five key dimensions – transparency and accountability, civil service and human resources management (HRM), public service delivery and digitalisation, organisation and management of government, and policy-making coordination and implementation. The article argues that there are four main factors influencing reform dynamics and determining policy outcomes in the Bulgarian case: the specific political choices made by government elites, external influence of the EU and of past national legacies, and the importance of institutions and reform mechanisms. To illustrate these factors at work, the article examines three policy initiatives, i.e. e-government, the reduction of administrative burden, and civil service reform. The article presents a longitudinal analysis and a qualitative case-study approach, utilising Annual Reports on the Status of the Public Administration 2001–2018, mapping European Semester Documents 2011–2017, an inventory of PAR initiatives 2005–2018, and interviews of public officials. The pushes for reform have been top-down, externally-driven, and stop-and-go in nature. The results confirm previous findings that Bulgaria is among the EU countries with the poorest record in PAR, struggling to overcome communist legacies and high levels of corruption and politicisation. The Bulgarian case highlights several important lessons: the importance of political will and political dynamics for the outcome of reform efforts; the importance of external pressure and financing; the difficulty of uprooting long-standing legacies in administrative traditions; and the limitations of the top-down approach as an obstacle to the sustainability of reform efforts.

This paper shows how class shaped service workers' experiences of administrative burdens during the COVID-19 pandemic. I use the pandemic and pandemic-related shutdowns as a pseudo natural experiment in which job loss was applied to a set of workers from different class backgrounds and with different class locations, workers who then turned to the state for assistance. Drawing on 46 interviews I conducted with service workers across the United States from May to October of 2020, I use Bourdieu's theory of the habitus to show how class background shaped the administrative burdens workers encountered. Workers' class origins left them with distinct approaches to bureaucracy that translated into disparate experiences of administrative burdens when workers sought unemployment insurance benefits. As a result, compared to workers from middle-class backgrounds, workers from working-class backgrounds more often experienced housing difficulties, dangerous work, and challenges to their sense of integrity.

Administrative burdens are the frictions that people face in their encounters with public services, leading to meaningful costs that include learning, compliance, and psychological costs. We offer evidence that burdens are a key source and consequence of inequality, resulting in disparate outcomes in people’s access to basic rights. We also detail how these outcomes are patterned by targeting, federalism, bureaucratic pathologies, and the growing use of the private sector and tax system to deliver social welfare benefits. Throughout, we highlight recent and novel contributions, including empirical research in this double issue, that have helped clarify how and why administrative burdens shape inequality. Burdens have not received the political, policy, or research priority that is commensurate with their magnitude or impact on individuals. We conclude by arguing that we need a coherent language and framework to recognize and, where appropriate, reduce burdens across a wide array of policy domains.

In the United States, some states allow undocumented immigrants to benefit from in-state resident tuition policy at public colleges and universities, a benefit aimed at improving accessibility to higher education. Yet, undocumented immigrants face bureaucratic procedures and requirements that may discourage them from applying and delay or hamper their access to higher education. Building upon administrative burdens scholarship and using quantitative data from the examination of college application forms and surveys administered to undocumented immigrants, this article explores requirements representing learning, compliance, and psychological costs when this group applies for college. Findings suggest that variations in requirements may reflect states’ political leanings, patterns of immigration, alternate social constructions, and organizational factors. Undocumented immigrants’ perceptions show that factors associated with SSN, citizenship, residency, notarized affidavits, and lack of clear information and guidance from college websites and personnel substantially increase burdens when these individuals seek in-state tuition benefits. This study contributes to higher education scholarship by highlighting how bureaucratic procedures and administrative discretion can help achieve or prevent the attainment of policy goals.

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.

Public policy often imposes administrative burdens that constrain people’s ability to access benefits and affirmatively exercise fundamental rights. In this article, we extend the administrative burden framework to argue that the state also places burdens on people who have involuntary contact with coercive state institutions, such as the child welfare system. Just as administrative burdens lock “undeserving,” marginalized populations out of benefits, administrative burdens also lock such populations into coercive intrusion. Drawing on interview data with system-involved mothers and child welfare caseworkers, we show how parents subject to oversight by child protection authorities must overcome substantial learning, compliance, and psychological costs or risk losing a fundamental right: the right to parent their children. We suggest that the burdens of service provision should be loaded onto governments rather than already strained and resource-deprived families.

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.

BackgroundMedicare’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) is a major value-based purchasing program. Little is known about how physician practice leaders view the program and its benefits and challenges.ObjectiveTo understand practice leaders’ perceptions of MIPS.Design and ParticipantsInterviews were conducted from December 12, 2019, to June 23, 2020, with leaders of 30 physician practices of various sizes and specialties across the USA. Practices were randomly selected using the Medical Group Management Association’s membership database. Practices included small primary care and general surgery practices (1–9 physicians); medium primary care and general surgery practices (10–25 physicians); and large multispecialty practices (50 or more physicians). Participants were asked about their perceptions of MIPS measures; the program’s effect on patient care; administrative burden; and rationale for participation.Main MeasuresMajor themes related to practice participation in MIPS.Key ResultsInterviews were conducted with 30 practices representing all US census regions. Six major themes emerged: (1) MIPS is understood as a continuation of previous value-based payment programs and a precursor to future programs; (2) measures are more relevant to primary care practices than other specialties; (3) leaders are conflicted on whether the program improves patient care; (4) MIPS creates a substantial administrative burden, exacerbated by annual programmatic changes; (5) incentives are small relative to the effort needed to participate; and (6) external support for participation can be helpful. Many participants indicated that their practice only participated in MIPS to avoid financial penalties; some reported that physicians cared for fewer patients due to the program’s administrative burden.ConclusionsPractice leaders reported several challenges related to MIPS, including irrelevant measures, administrative burden, frequent programmatic changes, and small incentives. They held mixed views on whether the program improves patient care. These findings may be useful to policymakers hoping to improve MIPS.