Book Review: Administrative burden: Policymaking by other means

• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0275074019882747
• Author: Randall S. Davis
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Review 113

requests. However, interviews would have been helpful if

only to verify his descriptions and analyses. For example, I do

not think the officials he studied would agree with all of the

seven goals and commitments he attributes to them as

Conservatives. Consider the first objective which is,

“Continuously reduce taxation and government expenditure,

preferably by automatic or compulsory mechanisms” (p. 4).

This assumes that Conservatives hate government and favor

taking taxes and government expenditure to zero. Maybe in

an ideal Conservative world, but Conservatives do not believe

an ideal world is possible; and they favor order, law, and secu-

rity, which requires a healthy government. Running these

goals and commitments past his studied Republican officials

in interviews would have been a good test of their accuracy.

Another complaint with the book is that some of the word

choices take on an inaccurate and partisan flavor. This is no

critique of the book’s chronicling and analysis, which is con-

sistently balanced, well-supported, and very insightful. The

most obvious example is the book’s title, Conservative

Innovators, which, Merriman writes, “seem[s] to belie a

standard idea of conservatism” that opposes reforms and

experiments—it is an understanding Merriman allows to

stand. Yet, few Conservatives, including Edmund Burke,

Russell Kirk, or William F. Buckley, oppose change or inno-

vation per se. The title, thus, reaffirms an inaccurate under-

standing of conservative beliefs and principles.

Similar problems arise in describing Republican state offi-

cials as “Choosing Conflict,” favoring “states’ rights,” and

adopting “voter restriction” laws. “Choosing Conflict” creates

an image of state Republican officials making a conscious

choice to escalate their disagreements into unnecessary and

illegitimate martial strife, but nothing in this book justifies

such connotations for Republican officeholders using the con-

stitutional and legal tools available to them in a checks and

balances system, or in a judicial system that is, by design,

adversarial. “States’ rights” is used by some conservatives, but

many others recognize it as a loaded term hearkening back to

unconstitutional justifications for slavery and Jim Crow laws

that do not reflect a conservative understanding of either indi-

vidual rights or states’ powers, responsibilities, and limita-

tions. Choosing “voter restriction” as the label for these laws

favors a partisan political slogan over a neutral term, such as

“Election and Voting” laws. The author also consistently refers

to the Republican officials at the center of his study as

Conservatives. Yet, when considering the state Attorneys

General using these tactics to frustrate Trump administration

policies, they are called Democrats, not Liberals or

Progressives. Why associate one group of public officials with

their political party and the other with an ideology?

The consequence of these word choices is an implicit par-

tisan bias that detracts from the book’s excellent and bal-

anced analyses. These word choices may, unfortunately, lead

some to reject that analysis, confirm existing biases that aca-

demics are not fair and balanced, and unnecessarily feed par-

tisan fires. And, although the book focuses on state officials’

partisan activities, it is important to remember that biparti-

sanship still defines a considerable number of state officials,’

including state Attorneys’ General, interactions with other

federal and state officials.

Overall, this is a valuable book for understanding the

movement, tools, and strategies state officials developed to

oppose federal policies, and which are currently reshaping

American federalism. The writing is clear, concise, and

engaging. It is appropriate for scholars in the field, and grad-

uate classes seeking to understand those tools along with the

background that led to their development.

As a result of these Republican innovations, states now

possess powerful tools to challenge executive policymaking

that bypasses Congress and the states. Whether policymak-

ing momentum shifts to the states, as Merriman suggests,

depends significantly on Congress, because Congress holds

many financial and constitutional powers to constrain the

states precisely in these areas. Until Congress asserts itself,

Merriman shows that it is the states’ innovative and energetic

efforts that are pushing federalism’s boundaries and giving

the states greater influence in national policymaking.

ORCID iD

Troy E. Smith https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6057-0713

Herd, P. and Moynihan, D. (2018). Administrative burden:

Policymaking by other means. New York, NY: Russell Sage

Foundation Press. 360 pp. $37.50. ISBN 978-0-87154-444-5.

Reviewed by: Randall S. Davis , Southern Illinois University,

Carbondale, USA.

DOI: 10.1177/0275074019882747

One of the major issues public administration scholarship

has confronted over the years is the absence of a thorough

examination of factors that undermine valuable citizen–state

interactions. Extensive research aims to describe the nature

of government processes, as well as explain policy outcomes

associated with those processes, when citizens directly inter-

act with government employees. In Administrative Burden:

Policy Making by Other Means, Pamela Herd and Donald

Moynihan paint a vivid portrait of the policy-making process

that expands beyond conventional descriptions of the policy

process by including the construction of administrative bur-

den as a political tool to serve policy goals. To that end, this

book offers a valuable addition to the body of public admin-

istration scholarship by examining how the quality of citizen

outcomes in the policy process is shaped by political forces

less visible to average citizens.

Herd and Moynihan build a multifaceted thesis describing

the political process of burden construction. They argue that

administrative burden constitutes a cost that citizens must

bear during interactions with government, but the costs of