How-to Bureaucracy: A Concept of Citizens’ Administrative Literacy

• DOI: 10.1177/0095399721995460
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399721995460

Administration & Society

2021, Vol. 53(8) 1155 –1177

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0095399721995460

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Article

How-to Bureaucracy:

A Concept of Citizens’

Administrative Literacy

Matthias Döring1

Abstract

Administrative literacy is the capacity to obtain, process, and understand

basic information and services from public organizations needed to make

appropriate decisions. Citizens’ competencies necessary for successful

interactions with public administration remain a widely neglected resource.

Administrative burden resulting from citizen–state interactions may impact

citizens differently depending on their available resources to cope. Research

from other fields such as health literacy suggests that these concepts

influence a variety of outcomes for both the individual and society. The article

develops a concept of administrative literacy to provide new approaches to

various fields of public administration and management research.

Keywords

administrative literacy, citizen–state interaction, administrative burden,

street-level bureaucracy

Citizens encounter public organizations in various life situations, be it the

police, the tax office, or an office for social welfare. On these occasions, citi-

zens interact (more or less) directly with the state and its administration. Yet,

“[d]espite the critical importance of this link in public administration,

1University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Matthias Döring, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, Odense M, DK-5230,

Denmark.

Email: mdoering@sam.sdu.dk

995460AASXXX10.1177/0095399721995460Administration & SocietyDöring

research-article2021

1156 Administration & Society 53(8)

citizen-state interactions have received relatively little direct attention within

the field” (Jakobsen et al., 2016, p. 1).

While the role of street-level bureaucrats (SLB) in such public encounters

(Bartels, 2014; Goodsell, 1981) has been intensely researched over the last

decades (Dubois, 2014; Keiser, 2010; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2012),

recently, public administration scholars have also looked at the relationship

between SLB and citizens. Research on representative bureaucracy (Lim,

2006) has investigated the effect of ethnic (Hong, 2017), gender (Guul, 2018;

Meier & Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Riccucci et al., 2016), and cultural matches

between bureaucracies and citizens (Andersen, 2017). Furthermore, studies

have examined the effects of the perceived deservingness of clients (Jilke &

Tummers, 2018), signals that are interpreted by SLB (Raaphorst & van de

Walle, 2018), causing discriminating behavior (Andersen & Guul, 2019;

Nicholson-Crotty et al., 2017), or the role of trust between both participants

in these encounters (Senghaas et al., 2019).

However, the role of citizens remains mostly passive in these studies,

whereas scholars agree that the abilities and capacities of citizens may be

crucial for influencing the behavior of SLB (Ludwig-Mayerhofer et al., 2014;

Senghaas et al., 2019, p. 10), for example, during negotiation processes

(Raaphorst & Loyens, 2018, p. 22). While SLB will tend to treat most clients

alike due to routinization, “ . . . those who are particularly able to assist in

managing their own cases, tend to receive differential responses [from the

SLB]” (Lipsky, 2010, p. 122). To what extent are clients with different abili-

ties and capacities able to convince the SLB to use his or her discretion in

favor of the client? Are clients with a better understanding of rules and regu-

lations more capable of avoiding sanctions? This interactional dimension of

public encounters remains widely unexplored. This is insofar remarkable as

citizens will not only differ in terms of their attitudes and trust toward public

institutions (Cook & Gronke, 2005) but also in the way they interact due to

their knowledge and skills (Gordon, 1975; Ludwig-Mayerhofer et al., 2014).

Most recently, researchers started to pay attention to this research gap.

Bisgaard (2020) provides a highly valuable approach and shows that self-

efficacy is a strong determinant of individual behavior during public encoun-

ters. Masood and Nisar (2020) describe in their case study how knowledge

about bureaucratic rules and procedures enables clients to approach public

organizations more proficiently, resulting in higher success rates when apply-

ing for maternity leave. Nielsen et al. (2020) provide a useful set of client

types based on their behavior prior and during public encounters.

This study seeks to further this citizen-centered perspective on interac-

tions. While self-efficacy (Bisgaard, 2020; Kristensen et al., 2012) is an

important antecedent for behavior, it is only one side of the medal. Bandura