Frictions on Both sides of the Counter? A Study of Red Tape Among Street-Level Bureaucrats and Administrative Burden Among Their Clients

• Published date: 01 July 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997241244694
• Author: Jonas Krogh Madsen
• Date: 01 July 2024

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997241244694

Administration & Society

2024, Vol. 56(6) 738 –762

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997241244694

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Article

Frictions on Both sides of

the Counter? A Study of

Red Tape Among Street-

Level Bureaucrats and

Administrative Burden

Among Their Clients

Jonas Krogh Madsen1

Abstract

Administrative burden research shows that onerous and dysfunctional

policy design can have detrimental outcomes among policy recipients.

But less is known about the intermediary role played by the street-level

bureaucrats who enforce these policies in practice. Using two separate

surveys of 775 unemployment benefit recipients and 107 counselors in the

Danish unemployment benefit system, I find that recipients report higher

levels of administrative burden when served by counselors who themselves

experience red tape from the rules and procedures they have to implement.

The findings have important policy implications by showing that experiences

of frictions among those assigned to convert onerous policies into practice

can exacerbate administrative burden among their clients.

Keywords

administrative burden, street-level bureaucracy, red tape

1Roskilde University, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Jonas Krogh Madsen, Public Administration, Roskilde University, Universitetsvej 1, Roskilde

4000, Denmark.

Email: jkroghm@ruc.dk

1244694AAS0010.1177/00953997241244694Administration & SocietyMadsen

research-article2024

Madsen 739

Introduction

Recent years have seen a massive surge in research about the detrimental

impact of administrative burden on policy take-up and—more generally—

program success (Bell & Smith, 2022; Christensen et al., 2020; Assouline

et al., 2022). Multiple studies have shown how citizens’ experiences of learn-

ing, compliance, and psychological costs tend to increase with onerous pol-

icy design, such as time-consuming application tasks, demanding eligibility

requirements, or complicated rules (Bækgaard et al., 2021; Chudnovsky &

Peeters, 2021; Fox et al., 2020; Moynihan et al., 2016; Peeters & Campos,

2021).

In administrative burden parlance, however, state actions encompass both

a policy’s design and how this policy is implemented by street-level bureau-

crats (Aarøe et al., 2021; Christensen et al., 2020; Herd & Moynihan, 2018).

While the former has received much attention, only a few administrative bur-

den studies focus on the latter (Jilke et al., 2018; Olsen et al., 2022; Porter &

Rogowski, 2018) and even fewer on the empirical link between street-level

bureaucrats’ perceptions and the administrative burden experiences of their

clients (Baekgaard & Tankink, 2022; Bell & Smith, 2019; Masood & Nisar,

2021; K. S. Mikkelsen et al., 2024). This novel line of research is important

as administrative burdens are not only products of policy design, but also

relate to how street-level bureaucrats perceive and implement policies in

practice.

It is well-established in street-level bureaucracy research that multiple

factors affect frontline discretionary decision-making, such as the street-level

bureaucrats’ role perceptions (Bell & Smith, 2019), their view of clients

(Nisar, 2018), and administrative capacity (Ali & Altaf, 2021). Here, a par-

ticularly long-standing theme has been the red tape encountered by street-

level bureaucrats when rules and procedures that apply to their daily work

lack functionality, have no legitimate purpose, or impose compliance burdens

(Bozeman, 2000, 2012; Kaufmann & Tummers, 2017). However, while red

tape has been shown to hamper organizational performance and employee

outcomes across a wide range of policy contexts (Campbell et al., 2023;

George et al., 2021; Pandey, 2021), few studies investigate whether street-

level bureaucrats’ red tape perceptions relate to the administrative burden

experiences of the clients they encounter. Addressing this gap is highly

important for the understanding and evaluation of policies—such as condi-

tional unemployment benefits—where street-level bureaucrats are obligated

to disseminate, implement, and ultimately enforce highly demanding policies

on clients with often complex needs. During such citizen-state interactions,

red tape from rules and procedures that lack functionality, clear purposes, or