Why Do Policymakers Support Administrative Burdens? The Roles of Deservingness, Political Ideology and Personal Experience

The ontology, origin, and impact of divisive public sector rules: A meta‐narrative review of the red tape and administrative burden literatures

“…As defined by Pandey (2021, p. 11), the assumption captures “the idea that cognitive evaluation of bureaucratic red tape is a simple matter of mechanically fitting the module made of dysfunction evaluation with the module made of burden evaluation.” In effect, the notion assumes that the psychological process underlying rule quality judgments reflect Bozeman's conceptual definition of red tape, with informants weighing compliance burden against rule effectiveness in a rational benefit–cost calculation. Given that red tape and administrative burden theory share a privileging of functionality in determining rule legitimacy, this problem is also relevant to administrative burden research, particularly the nascent burden tolerance concept, which is defined as “acceptance [of] and willingness to impose burdens in the social welfare domain” (Baekgaard et al, 2021, p. 184), but is empirically similar to rule quality studies of perceived red tape. If judgments about rule quality are primarily a function of experience or idiosyncratic psychological traits (or, in the case of administrative burden, political orientation), then they are intrinsically biased, and this threatens the viability of any research question that assumes objective judgment.…”