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What is a Literature Review?

Literature review process.

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What is APA Style?

APA Style is a standardized writing format, established by the American Psychological Association, which you may need to follow when submitting projects or papers. If you have questions about APA formatting, look at our APA Style Guide .

RefWorks   is a powerful online research management tool designed to help you easily gather, organize, store and share your research and to instantly generate citations and bibliographies. See our RefWorks research guide  for information about using refworks. 

A Literature Review is NOT:

• just a summary of sources
• a grouping of broad, unrelated sources
• a list of anything and everything that has been written on a specific topic
• literature criticism (think back to high school English classes) or a book review

So, what is it?

• a summary of each resource (but not just a summary!)
• an analyzation and interpretation of each resource
• a critical evaluation of each resource

A literature review is when you , the researcher, collect the Top Resources that you consider to be directly related to your research question. You will then take those resources and discuss how each of them supports (or does not support!) your research question, AND each other. 

For example, pretend your research question is "Does My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic teach kids positive, helping behavior?" You have three resources: Resource A, Resource B, and Resource C. Let's say that Resource A and Resource C agree that the My Little Pony show teaches kids positive social behaviors, like sharing. But maybe Resource B disagrees slightly, and says that there are some areas of the show that could use improvement. Your literature review should point out what all three resources agree on, and where they disagree (or differ). 

You are NOT adding your own opinion! That belongs to a different type of assignment. You're simply summarizing and combining (sometimes called synthesizing) the main points from each resource. 

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement
• Points the way in fulfilling a need for additional research
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies

The analytical features of a literature review might:

• Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations
• Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates
• Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant
• Identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date

Be sure to check out the Literature Review Template linked below to help you construct and organize your review! 

• Literature Review Template (pdf) from Thompson Rivers University

Development of the Literature Review

Four stages:.

• Introduce the reader to the importance of the topic being studied . The reader is oriented to the significance of the study and the research questions or hypotheses to follow.
• Places the problem into a particular context  that defines the parameters of what is to be investigated.
• Provides the framework for reporting the results  and indicates what is probably necessary to conduct the study and explain how the findings will present this information.
• Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored.
• Evaluation of resources  -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic.
• Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review:

Sources and expectations.  if your assignment is not very specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions:.

• Roughly how many sources should I include?
• What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites)?
• Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
• Should I evaluate the sources?
• Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find Models.   When reviewing the current literature, examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have organized their literature reviews. Read not only for information, but also to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research review.

Narrow the topic.  the narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources., consider whether your sources are current and applicable.  s ome disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. this is very common in the sciences where research conducted only two years ago could be obsolete. however, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed because what is important is how perspectives have changed over the years or within a certain time period. try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. you can also use this method to consider what is consider by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not., follow the bread crumb trail.  the bibliography or reference section of sources you read are excellent entry points for further exploration. you might find resourced listed in a bibliography that points you in the direction you wish to take your own research., ways to organize your literature review, chronologically:  .

If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published or the time period they cover.

By Publication:  

Order your sources chronologically by publication date, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.

Conceptual Categories:

The literature review is organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it will still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The only difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most.

Methodological:  

A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher.  A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Sections of Your Literature Review:  

Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy.

Here are examples of other sections you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

• Current Situation : information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
• History : the chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Selection Methods : the criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.
• Standards : the way in which you present your information.
• Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence:

A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be Selective:  

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use Quotes Sparingly:  

Some short quotes are okay if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute your own summary and interpretation of the literature.

Summarize and Synthesize:  

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep Your Own Voice:  

While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice (the writer's) should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording.

Use Caution When Paraphrasing:  

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

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Public Administration: Writing a Literature Review

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What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is a critical summary of what the scientific literature (books, articles, studies, theses and dissertations) says about your specific topic or question. Often student research in APA fields falls into this category. Your professor might ask you to write this kind of paper to demonstrate your familiarity with work in the field pertinent to the research you hope to conduct.

A literature review typically contains the following sections:

Introduction section (why is this topic important?)

List and analysis of references

Some instructors may also want you to write an abstract for a literature review, so be sure to check with them when given an assignment. Also, the length of a literature review and the required number of sources will vary based on course and instructor preferences.

(Adapted from the Purdue Online Writing Lab)

What should a literature review include?

Introduction :  Explain why this research topic is important.  Outline what direction your review will take: i.e., what aspects of the topic you’re focusing on.  

Body :  Present your summaries and evaluations of the sources in a clear, logical, and coherent manner.  Some options for organizing your review include chronological, order of importance, two sides of a controversial problem, differences in perspective or viewpoint.  Your review must “read” like a coherent paper, not a list.

Note :  Most literature reviews describe only the main findings, relevant methodological issues, and/or major conclusions of other research.

Ensure your final list of references includes all sources you’ve discussed, and use the citation style required in your discipline.

(Adapted from the Purdue Online Writing Lab) 

Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students

A tutorial by North Carolina State Universtiy

Subject Guide

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• > Policy-Making as Designing
• > Applying design in public administration: a literature review to explore the state of the art

Book contents

• Frontmatter
• List of figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Improving public policy and administration: exploring the potential of design
• 2 Applying design in public administration: a literature review to explore the state of the art
• 3 Challenges in applying design thinking to public policy: dealing with the varieties of policy formulation and their vicissitudes
• 4 Designing environments for experimentation, learning and innovation in public policy and governance
• 5 Policy Labs: the next frontier of policy design and evaluation?
• 6 When design meets power: design thinking, public sector innovation and the politics of policy-making
• 7 Designing institutions for designing policy
• 8 Applying design science in public policy and administration research
• 9 Using a design approach to create collaborative governance
• 10 Policy-making as designing: taking stock and looking forward

2 - Applying design in public administration: a literature review to explore the state of the art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2024

Introduction

Public sector organisations face many intractable issues, such as climate change, migration and integration, chronic diseases, aging and inequality. These issues touch upon different interests and values and are surrounded with uncertainty and controversy. Furthermore, governments also face financial pressures, urging them to come up with cost-efficient solutions. Citizens, simultaneously, expect governments to develop policies and services that fit their needs without causing excessive bureaucracy or unwanted inequalities (Kimbell, 2016; Bason, 2017). As a result, the problems governments are dealing with have become increasingly complex, and so have the solutions – policies and services – they develop: they have become increasingly integrated, spanning across levels of public administration and involving different actors (Chindarkar et al, 2017). As a result, governments are confronted with a significant design challenge: how to deal with ‘wicked problems’ (Rittel and Webber, 1973) in such a way that effective and efficient policies and services result, which are perceived as legitimate.

Design is advocated as a promising development in public administration for various reasons. Design processes are supposed to result in feasible and reliable policies, services and interventions, while addressing complex or even wicked social problems. They are said to foster creativity and develop innovation capabilities, by helping participants to imagine alternative solutions and features. In addition, design is supposed to help integrate insights from different fields, sources or actors, thus increasing the chances of a successful implementation of a policy that meets the needs of users. Designed policies and services are potentially more responsive to the needs of those who work with them (Steen, 2011; Bailey and Lloyd, 2016; Chindarkar et al, 2017; Blomkamp, 2018).

The question how scholars in public administration can contribute to this challenge and enhance the design capacities of public governments is far from new within the field. At the first Minnowbrook Conference (1968), Herbert Simon held a set of lectures on artificial or design sciences. These sciences focus on the artificial – the manmade – as opposed to the natural sciences. Artificial sciences therefore incorporate design, which is ‘concerned with how things ought to be, with devising artefacts to attain goals’ (Simon, 1969: 133).

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• Applying design in public administration: a literature review to explore the state of the art
• By Margot Hermus , Arwin van Buuren , Victor Bekkers
• Edited by Arwin van Buuren , Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam , Jenny M. Lewis , University of Melbourne , B. Guy Peters , University of Pittsburgh
• Book: Policy-Making as Designing
• Online publication: 20 January 2024
• Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781447365952.002

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Article Contents

Introduction, key claims in administrative burden research, characteristics of studies on administrative burden, qualitative analysis of key causal relationships, setting an agenda for future research, supplementary material, acknowledgment, data availability.

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Administrative Burden in Citizen–State Interactions: A Systematic Literature Review

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Aske Halling, Martin Baekgaard, Administrative Burden in Citizen–State Interactions: A Systematic Literature Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory , Volume 34, Issue 2, April 2024, Pages 180–195, https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muad023

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Based on a systematic review of 119 articles and working papers, we provide an overview of how administrative burdens in citizen–state interactions have been studied since the inception of the research agenda in 2012. We develop a new and comprehensive model of how key concepts in the framework are related, assess the evidence of the causal relationships proposed by the model, and discuss where more evidence is needed. Empirical research supports conventional claims that burdens are consequential, distributive, and constructed. However, the literature has moved further by (1) demonstrating that factors such as frontline service delivery and government communication influence experiences of burdens; (2) highlighting how factors beyond ideology influence constructions of burdens; (3) introducing the burden tolerance concept; (4) illustrating that experiences of burden influence policymakers’ and members of the publics’ burden tolerance. Based on the review, we propose an agenda for future administrative burden research. We call for studies linking experiences of burden to outcomes such as democratic behavior and take-up, and for studies connecting policymakers’ burden tolerance to actual state actions. Moreover, we argue that future studies should use qualitative methods to further explore the nature of burdens from the perspective of citizens, rely on experimental methods to establish causal links between state actions and experiences of burden, and compare burdens across contexts. Further, empirical studies should examine the tradeoffs between legitimacy and experiences of burden, and how actors outside the citizen–state interaction may influence experiences of administrative burden.

Administrative burden is defined as an individual’s experiences of policy implementation as onerous ( Burden et al. 2012 ). The concept thus emphasizes the experiences of individuals and how state actions, in the form of policies and how they are implemented in practice, influence said experiences ( Baekgaard and Tankink 2022 ). In principle, the definition applies to any individual subject to policy implementation ( Madsen, Mikkelsen, and Moynihan 2022 , 7–8), but the concept has particularly been used in the context of citizen–state interactions ( Jakobsen et al. 2016 ).

Building on research traditions on, among others, take-up of policies and benefits ( Bhargava and Manoli 2015 ; Currie 2006 ), policy feedback ( Moynihan and Soss 2014 ; Soss 1999 ), street-level bureaucracy ( Brodkin and Majmundar 2010 ; Lipsky 1980 ), and red tape ( Bozeman and Youtie 2020 ) that all draw attention to onerous experiences with the state, administrative burden has been showcased as an important concept to create an overarching framework to understand such experiences.

However, we lack a comprehensive overview of how the field has studied administrative burden since the introduction of the concept in the seminal articles by Burden et al. (2012) and Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey (2015) , and how various research questions relate to one another. Even though the standard definition of administrative burden points to individual experiences, scholars in practice refer to different phenomena when studying administrative burden. Some focus on actions made by the state (i.e., “objective” burdens), some focus on individuals’ subjective perceptions, and some focus on individual outcomes, such as take-up of benefits or health ( Baekgaard and Tankink 2022 ). Moreover, research foci differ. Some studies focus on understanding individual experiences and outcomes and how negative experiences and outcomes can be reduced, while others focus on why policies and practices associated with burdensome experiences are enacted by policymakers or how they are implemented at the frontline.

To take stock of the current state of administrative burden research and to better connect empirical knowledge and research questions in current research, we conduct a systematic review of 119 published articles and working papers focusing on administrative burdens in citizen–state interactions. We limit our sample to papers specifically claiming to draw on this framework, that is, studies published between the inception of the concept and framework in Burden et al. (2012) and Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey (2015) and the beginning of 2023. To ensure reproducibility and transparency, we follow the widely used PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines ( Page et al. 2021 ).

There have been a number of theoretical and conceptual articles and literature reviews about administrative burdens ( Baekgaard and Tankink 2022 ; Campbell, Pandey, and Arnesen 2022 ; Madsen, Mikkelsen, and Moynihan 2022 ; Peeters 2020 ). However, none of these articles have systematically covered all studies on the topic or taken up the task of connecting different streams of administrative burden research in a theoretical model. Our systematic review therefore makes two contributions to administrative burden research.

The first contribution is theoretical. Using a qualitative coding of the articles and papers included in our review, we build a theoretical model of how key concepts in the administrative burden causally relate to each other. This model is based partly on theoretical arguments in the literature, partly on empirical evidence, and seeks to connect studies of very different research questions within administrative burden research to create a coherent theoretical framework. The aim is not to make a parsimonious theoretical claim but rather to construct a model of the many antecedents, moderators, and potential consequences of administrative burden experiences identified in this literature.

The second contribution is an overview of how administrative burdens in citizen–state interactions have been studied to date. We describe the methodological and contextual characteristics of the studies included in the review and connect key concepts in the administrative burden framework to identify areas of inquiry where substantial progress has been made and to point to areas where future studies could best be directed.

The next section briefly discusses the concept of administrative burden and key causal claims in the administrative burden literature. In the methods section, we describe our literature search, criteria for including studies in the review, and how studies were coded and analyzed. This is followed by our qualitative analysis of the literature. We start out by presenting a model based on the review and then classify the evidence for seven causal claims in the model. The article concludes with a discussion of limitations and proposals for a future research agenda.

Administrative burden refers to the learning, compliance, and psychological costs experienced by citizens when interacting with the state ( Herd and Moynihan 2018 ). Learning costs are the costs of learning about rights, rules, and demands associated with interacting with the state ( Barnes and Riel 2022 ). For instance, an individual eligible for the TANF program in the United States has to be aware that the program exists and how to apply for the benefits. Compliance costs are the costs of complying with specific rules in interactions with the state. In the TANF example, the applicant has to fill out an application form and demonstrate eligibility. For the unemployed, compliance costs may manifest as the costs of having to show up for meetings at public offices to demonstrate an active search for work and of updating CVs on a regular basis ( Baekgaard et al. 2021 ; Madsen nda ). Finally, psychological costs have to do with the mental discomfort of interacting with the government ( Hattke, Hensel, and Kalucza 2020 ). For instance, interactions associated with uncertainty may lead to experiences of stress, loss of autonomy, or even stigma ( Cecchini nd ).

By emphasizing the subjective costs experienced by citizens and explicitly referring to individual experiences in the definition of the concept ( Burden et al. 2012 ), the administrative burden literature makes a key distinction between what the state does (sometimes called barriers, frictions, state actions, or state constructions of burdens) and what the individual experiences. However, this does not mean that the literature is only interested in the impact of experiences. Rather, the literature makes three key claims about burdens ( Herd and Moynihan 2018 ; Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey 2015 ) regarding what the state does, how citizens experience the actions of the state, individual differences in said experiences, and the consequences of burdensome experiences. Figure 1 summarizes the claims in a simplified model (see Baekgaard and Tankink 2022 ; Christensen et al. 2020 ; Herd and Moynihan 2018 for similar models).

Key Claims in the Administrative Burden Literature.

First, burdens are consequential. The impact of burdens is likely to extend beyond people’s experiences and influence outcomes such as civic and electoral participation, health, and take-up of benefits. This claim is rooted very much in literatures on policy feedback, benefit take-up, and applied economics. These research traditions empirically demonstrate that aspects of what the state does may have important impacts for the mobilization of citizens (e.g., Bruch, Ferree, and Soss 2010 ; Soss 1999 ), the extent to which target groups take up services and benefits for which they are eligible (e.g., Currie 2006 ), and the long-run health of citizens enrolled in welfare programs (e.g., Hoynes, Schanzenbach, and Almond 2016 ). However, they do less to explore people’s subjective experiences of burden. In this respect, the administrative burden framework contributes to previous streams of research by creating a language for the mechanisms linking state actions to outcomes.

Second, burdens have distributive consequences and are likely to fall harder on those with fewer resources in the form of human and administrative capital ( Christensen et al. 2020 ; Masood and Nisar 2021 ), administrative literacy ( Döring 2021 ), and bureaucratic self-efficacy ( Bisgaard 2023 ). Third, while some burdensome state actions are likely unintended ( Peeters and Widlak 2023 ), or the result of unconscious biases ( Olsen, Kyhse-Andersen, and Moynihan 2020 ), other state actions are constructed and the result of deliberate political and administrative decisions, that is, politicians or bureaucrats prefer to introduce burdens to, for instance, limit fraud in public programs ( Moynihan, Herd, and Ribgy 2016 ).

Thus, the literature relies on a broad understanding of the relevant domain of inquiry. This domain is not limited to the study of experiences and outcomes among citizens and target groups. As per the third causal claim above, it also encompasses decisions and rationales for decisions made by elected politicians, administrators, and frontline personnel. In our review, we therefore rely on a broad understanding of the domain of administrative burden in citizen–state interactions where studies are relevant whenever the subject matter has to do with a state arrangement introducing burden for citizens. The studies may focus either on decisions made by politicians or bureaucrats or on the consequences of such decisions for citizens. In our analysis of the literature, we seek to develop the model presented in figure 1 further by reviewing the empirical findings in existing studies.

We adhere to the PRISMA guidelines when conducting our systematic literature review ( Page et al. 2021 ). These guidelines were developed to ensure that literature reviews are comprehensive, transparent, and well documented to minimize reporting biases and ensure reproducibility. The PRISMA checklist is available in the appendix . Below we describe the eligibility criteria for inclusion in the review as well as our search and coding strategy.

Eligibility Criteria

Our focus is on administrative burdens in citizen–state interactions. The main inclusion criterion is that studies use the conceptual framework formulated by Burden et al. (2012) , Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey (2015) , and Herd and Moynihan (2018) , that is, refer explicitly to administrative burden and/or learning, compliance, and psychological costs. Other streams of literature in economics, sociology, political science, and public administration also deal with frictions in interactions between citizens and government. This includes, but is not limited to, literatures on red tape, sludge, ordeals, take-up of government benefits, street-level bureaucracy, and policy feedback ( Baekgaard and Tankink 2022 ; Madsen, Mikkelsen, and Moynihan 2022 ). However, as administrative burden has developed into a sizeable subfield of its own, which in several aspects differs from related research in other disciplines ( Madsen, Mikkelsen, and Moynihan 2022 ), it is important to take stock of the current state of this particular field and explore what the literature has taught us so far.

The second inclusion criterion is that studies focus on administrative burdens in citizen–state interactions. This means that we exclude studies that use the administrative burden framework but focus either on companies ( Petersen, Hansen, and Houlberg 2022 ), third-party organizations ( Carey et al. 2020 ), or on the costs experienced by public employees in their interactions with the organization where they are employed ( Bozeman and Youtie 2020 ; Linos and Riesch 2020 ; Sievert, Vogel, and Feeney 2020 ). We make this decision because our goal is to understand how, why, and when citizens experience burdens in their interactions with the state. In comparison, studies on public employees burdened by work routines focus on internal organizational affairs rather than a bureaucratic relationship between the state and individual outside the formal organizational hierarchy. Also, burdens among public employees have been studied extensively in the red tape literature ( George et al. 2020 ). Nevertheless, the review still includes studies where elected politicians and frontline personnel were asked about the imposition of burdens on individuals outside the organization. Thus, the review applies a broad understanding of citizens as individuals and organizations outside the formal organizational hierarchy of the state in a given case.

The remaining inclusion criteria are more straightforward. We are interested in all English-language peer-reviewed publications and working papers from 2012 until our data collection closed in February 2023. 1 We set the start to 2012, because this is when Burden et al. (2012) wrote their seminal article that introduced and defined the term “administrative burdens.” Table 1 gives an overview of the eligibility criteria.

Overview of Eligibility Criteria

Literature Search

To identify peer-reviewed journal articles, we searched all journals in the Social Sciences Citation Index using Web of Science. We searched titles, abstracts, and keywords for “administrative burden,” “psychological cost,” “compliance cost,” “learning cost,” and derivatives of these terms. We limited our search to English-language articles. We also searched 12 leading public administration journals (see list of journals in appendix table A1 ) using the same terms. We then screened titles and abstracts and then full papers to identify all papers that passed our eligibility criteria. Finally, we screened the literature list of all eligible journal articles for missing records. In total, we identified 100 peer-reviewed journal articles for the systematic literature review.

To obtain a comprehensive pool of working papers, we created a list of all authors who contributed at least two articles to the literature review (see appendix table A2 ). We then contacted all authors on the list and asked them to provide any unpublished, full-length papers on administrative burdens that they had (co-)authored. We also encouraged them to let us know if they knew of other working papers on the topic. Almost all authors replied within a few days and most sent one or more working papers. Moreover, we made a call for working papers through our Twitter accounts and a similar call through a listserv for scholars interested in administrative burden research managed by Professor Donald Moynihan. Based on these steps, we collected 19 eligible working papers. 2 In total, 119 papers are included in the review (see the full list of papers in appendix table A7 ). Figure 2 summarizes the selection process.

Selection Process.

Coding Strategy

We relied on two strategies for coding the articles. First, we systematically coded several facts about the articles (year of publication, whether empirical material was collected, methods used, country covered by empirical analysis, policy area, and type of subjects) using a closed coding strategy (see appendix table A3 for a full description of coding criteria). We present this information in the first part of the results section to give an overview of the field and the types of studies conducted.

Second, we used an open coding where we focused on core concepts covered in the articles and types of causal relations covered in the papers. This is a demanding task that requires that coders have in-depth knowledge of the literature. We therefore handled all coding ourselves and met several times during the coding process to ensure consistency in the categorization of relationships and concepts. We use the qualitative coding to summarize current knowledge about the different relationships shown in figure 1 and to extend the causal model based on the findings and arguments in extant research.

Citation Analysis

This first part of the analysis covers key characteristics of the articles on administrative burdens in citizen–state interactions. Related to the discussion of eligibility criteria, we initially explore whether studies frequently cited by our 119 eligible studies are missing in the review. Table 2 shows that among the top 10 most cited papers and publications in the review, three publications do not rely on the administrative burden framework and therefore do not meet the eligibility criteria. Two of these publications ( Brodkin and Majmundar 2010 ; Lipsky 1980 ) concern street-level bureaucracy, and the third ( Bhargava and Manoli 2015 ) focuses on take-up of benefits. Thus, while there certainly are some widely cited works outside the narrow domain of administrative burden research, the field is generally dominated by internal references, suggesting that administrative burden research indeed constitutes a distinct field of its own.

Top 10 Most Cited Publications by the 119 Papers Included in the Systematic Review

A related question is how well studies with different foci, research questions, and methodologies speak to one another. We conducted a bibliographical network analysis ( Perianes-Rodriguez, Waltman, and van Eck 2016 ) in which we explored citation patterns between articles. As shown in appendix table A4 , assortativity scores are generally low, suggesting that articles tend to cite each other to an almost equal extent despite different methodologies and research questions ( Newman 2003 ). Overall, the analysis suggests that the field is coherent in the sense that even the most different parts of the field tend to rely on each other’s work.

Methodological Characteristics

Of the 119 collected articles, 75% are empirical papers using qualitative or quantitative analysis of data, while 25% are theoretical papers, literature reviews, or case studies. Articles are published in 35 different journals. Most are published in public administration journals, but some are published in either health, economics, or political science journals. The most frequent appearances are in Public Administration Review with 17, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory with 16, and Journal of Behavioral Public Administration with 11 articles (see appendix table A5 for full details). Figure 3 shows a timeline of all published papers on the topic. Only nine were published between 2012 and 2017, but the publication trend changed significantly in 2018. From 2018 to 2021, the number of yearly published papers almost doubled each year from 5 in 2018 to 36 in 2021. While 2022 saw a decline in publications to 20, the overall trend still indicates that the study of administrative burden has established itself as a sizeable subfield within public administration research.

Publication Timeline.

Note: n = 100. The figure shows the year studies were made available online and does not include working papers.

Figure 4 graphs methodological characteristics of the studies. Panel A shows that more than half the empirical studies use quantitative methods. However, a substantial number of articles employ qualitative methods or case studies, meaning the field is characterized by some methodological diversity. This is also evident from panel D, where we divide the quantitative and qualitative categories into more specific subcategories. We see that studies on administrative burdens use a great variety of methods, and that studies utilize both observational and experimental data to a high extent. Studies are also relatively diverse when it comes to the origin of data, as our review includes studies from all six inhabited continents. However, studies from Western countries dominate the literature, as 82% of all studies were conducted in either the United States, Europe, or Australia (see panel B). We also coded whether papers used data from more than one country. Only three papers used data do so, and neither of them used a comparative approach where they compared burdens across contexts. Panel D shows that almost half of the studies focus on target group members. This aligns well with the fact that one purpose of the administrative burden framework is to draw attention to individuals’ experiences of policy implementation ( Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey 2015 ). Finally, panel E shows that around 50% of all studies focused on means-tested welfare benefits. This may reflect that means-tested programs are often where citizens encounter the most requirements and therefore are likely to experience various burdens when interacting with the state.

Methodological Characteristics of Empirical Studies.

Note: Figures A-E display various charatersitics of empirical studies. Articles that fit into more than one category are coded into all relevant categories. Purely theoretical articles are not included in any of the figures.

This section presents the results of our qualitative analysis of the literature. Figure 5 provides an overview of our main findings. This model extends the theoretical model in figure 1 in four important respects. First, it proposes a more nuanced understanding of what state actions are. In line with Baekgaard and Tankink (2022 , 17), we understand state actions broadly to cover what the state does “including laws, rules, requirements, and how such are implemented by public officials and street-level bureaucrats.” This leads us to distinguish between formal (arrow 1) and informal policy designs (arrow 2). While formal policy design refers to the laws and rules enacted by politicians, that is, the rules that people will have to abide to get access to services and benefits, informal policy design concerns how these rules are implemented at the frontline and communicated more broadly. This allows us to discuss how different aspects of policies lead to experiences of administrative burdens. Second, the model extends the number of factors explaining state actions beyond political ideology by introducing the concepts of burden support and burden tolerance, that is, “the willingness of policymakers and people more generally to passively allow or actively impose state actions that result in others experiencing administrative burdens” ( Baekgaard, Moynihan, and Thomsen 2021 , 184). As shown, support and tolerance for burdens may sometimes be influenced by the content of state actions when people become aware of actual rules and implementation (arrow 6b).

Extended Model of Causal Claims.

Third, the model proposes that other factors than political ideology and beliefs may influence burden tolerance and state actions. In particular, the model highlights the importance of target group deservingness, personal experience, and bureaucratic processes (arrow 7). Fourth, the model proposes feedback effects of citizens’ experiences of burden on how burdens are constructed by the state and how tolerant policymakers and others are of burdens to begin with (arrows 5a and 5b).

Table 3 lists the number of studies that cover each relationship. Below, we discuss each of the seven arrows in figure 5 . Our aim is not to mention all studies discussing each specific arrow but rather to summarize current knowledge about each relationship. Our discussion therefore only covers selected articles that provide knowledge on the relationship under discussion. Appendix table A6 is an extended version of table 3 and shows the articles that provide knowledge on each relationship.

Number of Papers Studying Each Causal Relationship

Arrow 1: Formal Policy Design → Experiences of Burden

With few exceptions, studies find that state barriers are associated with experiences of learning and compliance costs. Learning costs, for instance, arise when being subject to requirements ( Cook 2021 ), misinformation ( Chudnovsky and Peeters 2021a ), and having to deal with vouchers ( Barnes 2021 ), while compliance costs arise because of transportation time to vaccinator camps ( Ali and Altaf 2021 ) and completing forms ( Yates et al. 2022 ). Some studies find that learning and compliance costs arise as a consequence of (eligibility) requirements in means-tested welfare programs ( Holler and Tarshish 2022 ) and insurance programs ( Yates et al. 2022 ). Other studies find that learning and compliance costs also arise in settings such as the restoration of voting rights ( Selin 2019 ), digital government services ( Madsen, Lindgren, and Melin 2022 ), and accessing vaccinations ( Ali and Altaf 2021 ).

Studies are conducted in diverse contexts such as Pakistan, Denmark, the United States, and Argentina, suggesting there is some universality to the claim that interacting with the state is associated with experiences of learning and compliance costs. However, one paper finds that having a scheduled compulsory meeting with frontline workers causes no changes in compliance costs and is associated with experiences of less learning costs ( Baekgaard and Madsen 2023 ). Another study finds that digital self-service solutions have the potential to both increase and reduce learning and compliance costs ( Madsen, Lindgren, and Melin 2022 ).

This suggests that more research is needed on how different types of state actions reduce and impose experiences of learning and compliance costs. Such studies could build on more qualitative approaches to obtain a better understanding of the mechanisms linking state actions to experiences. Also, when it comes to understanding the costs of dealing with different state actions, qualitative methods have major advantages over other methods. With a few exceptions ( Ali and Altaf 2021 ; Baekgaard and Madsen 2023 ), most papers indeed use qualitative methods to study the relationship between barriers and learning and compliance costs, while no papers use experimental methods. This is not surprising, as it is often hard to manipulate barriers or state actions. However, in addition to more qualitative research, the literature would benefit from studies that are able to causally link state actions to experiences of learning and compliance costs. As mentioned in the next section, a few studies document how state actions causally influence experiences of psychological costs, showing that it is possible to causally study the link between state actions and experiences of administrative burdens.

There are 50% more studies on the relationship between formal policy designs and psychological costs than on the comparable relationship with learning and compliance costs discussed above, illustrating that this relationship has received high scholarly attention. The general finding from the 16 studies discussing this topic is that state actions are associated with various forms of psychological costs. Examples of psychological costs arising from state actions are autonomy loss and stress ( Baekgaard et al. 2021 ), frustration ( Cook 2021 ), stigma ( Selin 2019 ; Thomsen, Baekgaard, and Jensen 2020 ), externalization of locus of control ( Madsen and Mikkelsen 2022 ), uncertainty ( Cecchini nd ) and confusion, anger, and frustration ( Hattke, Hensel, and Kalucza 2020 ).

Studies fall in two methodological categories: qualitative studies and experiments. Qualitative studies provide in-depth knowledge about how state actions may lead to psychological costs. One example is Yates et al.’s (2022) study of burdens in Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme. One interviewee mentions that it was “wearing” and “soul destroying” “to be constantly questioned about, are you disabled enough” (p. 5), showing how eligibility requirements can create psychological costs.

Experimental studies establish causal links between barriers and costs. Baekgaard et al. (2021) use survey- and field-experimental evidence to show that reductions in state compliance demands reduce stress and increase the sense of autonomy among target group members. Hattke, Hensel, and Kalucza (2020) and Hattke et al. (nd) rely on laboratory experiments to show how redundant documentation requirements and simple administrative processes can cause confusion, frustration, and anger.

In general, the link between state actions and psychological costs is relatively well covered in the literature. However, studies so far have generally examined only one or a few state actions. There is a lack of studies that compare effects of different actions on psychological costs. Such studies could provide valuable knowledge on which state actions translate into psychological costs.

Arrow 2: Informal Policy Design → Experiences of Burden

Informal policy design has to do with the actions by the state that do not directly refer to the formal rules and requirements as decided by policymakers but rather how these are processed and communicated to citizens. Two aspects of informal policy design are particularly prevalent in research on administrative burden: frontline service delivery and government communication.

Frontline Service Delivery

It is no surprise that the delivery of services at the frontline of public organizations matters for experiences of burden. Lipsky (1980) alluded to this, and subsequent work has explored this question without explicitly using the concept of administrative burden (e.g., Brodkin and Majmundar 2010 ; Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011 ). Studies applying the administrative burden framework show that workload matters for experiences of administrative burden. For instance, Bell and Meyer (nd) use administrative data from college financial aid programs to show that decreases in workload lead to an increase in program access for low-income students and that the increase is highest among students who have been subject to discrimination based on their race. Ali and Altaf (2021) show that citizens experience more burdens in areas with lower administrative capacity, while others find that stress and burnout ( Mikkelsen, Madsen, and Baekgaard 2023 ) and red tape ( Madsen ndb ) among frontline workers are associated with experiences of burden among their clients.

The behavior of frontline workers also matters for citizens’ experiences. Bell and Smith (2022) show that frontline workers who adopt a support role rather than a role as “compliance officer” are more likely to use their discretionary power to help students overcome administrative burdens. In a similar vein, Halling’s (nd) results suggest that frontline workers help citizens overcome burdens by circumventing rules. Finally, Barnes and Henly’s (2018) qualitative analysis shows that clients tend to blame their experiences of administrative burden on frontline employees.

Government Communication

Another part of informal policy design that has received considerable attention is how communication from the state affects individuals’ experiences of administrative burden. All these papers rely on field experiments with randomized exposure to different forms of government communication. Linos et al. (2022) show that disadvantaged groups prefer postcards over a telephone hotline to seek information about free dental care. They use focus groups to show that this is likely explained by lower psychological costs associated with postcards as participants fear uncomfortable interactions with bureaucrats. Moynihan et al. (2022) show how the framing of state categories matters for selecting into the right categories and that a more intuitive presentation of information increased the number of claimants providing adequate documentation. Simplified communication ( Linos, Reddy, and Rothstein 2022 ), destigmatizing language ( Lasky-Fink and Linos 2023 ), early communication ( Linos, Quan, and Kirkman 2020 ), postcards ( Hock et al. 2021 ), letters ( Bhanot 2021 ), and text messages ( Lopoo, Heflin, and Boskovski 2020 ) can also improve take-up.

Altogether, these field experiments show that different forms of nudges can be effective in increasing take-up of benefits among eligible individuals. Apart from the two first-mentioned studies, the studies do not measure experiences of burden directly. Instead, they measure different outcomes while theorizing that the link between communication and outcomes has to do with experiences of burden. Hence, there is a need for studies that show that reduction of administrative burdens is the process through which these nudges work.

Arrow 3: Distributive Effects

The argument that administrative burdens are distributive and can foster inequality is at the core of the administrative burden framework ( Christensen et al. 2020 ; Herd and Moynihan 2018 ). Thirty-one papers contribute knowledge on the distributional consequences of state actions. Differences in resources, attitudes, and expectations between citizens constitute one main type of distributive effects identified in the literature ( Christensen et al. 2020 ; Heinrich 2018 ; Nisar 2018 ). The other type, which has received less attention, focuses on how characteristics of the state may contribute to different experiences of burden among different parts of the population ( Griffiths 2021 ; Peeters, Renteria, and Cejudo nd ). We discuss both types next.

Citizen Factors

Studies show that possessing administrative literacy ( Döring 2021 ; Döring and Madsen 2022 ), self-efficacy ( Thomsen, Baekgaard, and Jensen 2020 ), habitus and different forms of capital ( Carey, Malbon, and Blackwell 2021 ; Masood and Nisar 2021 ) all make state barriers easier to handle, resulting in fewer experiences of burdens. All these contributions are important in documenting that possessing the necessary capital and skills is key when dealing with onerous state demands.

However, there is a considerable overlap between the different concepts. Apart from self-efficacy, all focus on a type of capital (or literacy) that makes state encounters easier to handle. Some are specific to encounters with the state (administrative literacy and capital), while others are more general forms of capital (human capital and Bourdieu’s capital concepts). Discussing differences and similarities between the concepts is beyond the scope of this article, but we note that using fewer concepts would strengthen the comparative potential across studies.

Other studies focus on how experiences of burdens are distributed across demographic and non-demographic characteristics. The general finding is that individuals from marginalized or low-resource groups tend to struggle more with state barriers. So far, studies have shown that individuals with low income or who are experiencing scarce financial resources ( Chudnovsky and Peeters 2021b ; Heinrich et al. 2022 ; Larsson 2021 ; Madsen, Baekgaard and Kvist 2022 ), ethnic minorities ( Heinrich 2018 ; Olsen, Kyhse-Andersen, and Moynihan 2020 ), women ( Kyle and Frakt 2021 ; Yates et al. 2022 ), individuals with low or no education ( Chudnovsky and Peeters 2021b ; Collie et al. 2021 ; Kyle and Frakt 2021 ), and those suffering from sickness and disabilities ( Bell et al. 2022 ; Collie et al. 2021 ; Kyle and Frakt 2021 ) experience more administrative burdens as a result of state actions.

Relatedly, a few studies discuss how citizens’ attitudes and expectations might influence how citizens engage with the state and hence lead to different impacts of state actions on experiences of burden. These attitudes and expectations may themselves stem from a variety of sources including prior interactions with the state ( Chudnovsky and Peters 2021b , 531), thus suggesting a potential feedback effect from outcomes on attitudes and expectations (see also Moynihan and Soss 2014 ). 3

Finally, a last stream of studies considers how individuals’ access to relevant third parties, actors outside the citizen–state interaction that provide help to citizens or otherwise influence interactions ( Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey 2015 ), may affect their experiences of administrative burden. A few papers explore the role of such actors. Barnes (2021, nd ) shows that retailers play a crucial role in shaping compliance costs in voucher programs such as WIC. Because citizens must redeem their vouchers in retail stores, retailers play a huge role in shaping how easy redemption is. Concrete examples are the degree to which eligible food is marked and displayed and whether store personnel are trained in handling vouchers. NGOs may also contribute to reduced learning and compliance costs by helping citizens overcome burdens ( Nisar 2018 ; Nisar and Masood nd ). Finally, (ex-)family members may influence experiences of administrative burden ( Nisar 2018 ). Cook (2021) illustrates how ex-partners may directly impose burdens on mothers in the child support benefit system in Australia. As an example, some fathers limit their child support liabilities or claim that they have already provided payments to mothers. Each time fathers make such changes or claims, mothers are required to respond, which can be associated with substantial compliance costs.

State Characteristics

Another possible source of distributive effects is the state itself. A key insight from this stream of research is that variations in administrative capacities to reach out to vulnerable populations may contribute to inequality in the experience of burdens. Some studies investigate how individuals may experience different burdens in states with different characteristics. The most prominent characteristic examined so far is the extent to which the state is automated and digitalized. Peeters, Renteria, and Cejudo (nd) illustrate how governments with higher information capacity are better able to “absorb” burdens, which means that citizens face fewer administrative burdens. Digital government may also create unintentional errors that contribute to considerable experiences of administrative burden. Griffiths (2021) shows how automation of benefit calculation can create burdensome experiences. For example, people with irregular pay dates risk missing out on benefits for which they are eligible because automation processes do not account for irregular cases. Likewise, Widlak and Peeters (2020) show that citizens face various administrative burdens in correcting errors made by the state, while Compton et al. (2022) show that blacks and Hispanics are disproportionally hit by administrative errors.

Other state characteristics that may influence experiences of administrative burdens are material and artificial artifacts present in physical and virtual government arenas ( Nisar and Masood nd ) and consistent application of rules ( Kaufmann, Ingrams, and Jacobs 2021 ). Finally, Johnson and Kroll (2021) theorize but find no supporting empirical evidence that representative government and shared identities between frontline employees and citizens may decrease experiences of burden.

Arrow 4: Experiences of Burden → Outcomes

According to Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey (2015) , administrative burdens are an important part of governance, “since they affect whether citizens succeed in accessing services (did I get what I want), whether public polices succeed (did a program reach the targeted group?), and the perceptions of government (was I treated fairly and with respect?)” (p. 43). However, despite the obvious importance of studying the link between experiences of burden and various outcomes, only Daigneault and Macé (2020) have done so among published papers. Based on interviews with target group members, they show that individuals experiencing compliance and learning costs are less likely to take up Quebec’s Supplement to the Work Premium program. Other papers study the link between state actions and outcomes but without subjective measures of people’s experiences of administrative burden. Notable examples are Heinrich (2016) and Jenkins and Nguyen (2022) , who convincingly, and with strong causal traction, show that various state actions influence take-up of welfare programs and might even impact long-term outcomes such as risky behaviors in adolescence ( Heinrich 2016 ; Heinrich and Brill 2015 ). These studies contribute important knowledge on how state actions influence take-up of welfare benefits but not on the relationship between subjective experiences of burden and outcomes.

Several working papers show that experiences of burden are associated with behaviors that can lead to reduced program take-up, such as compliance and autonomous motivation ( Madsen nda ), making errors on forms ( Hattke et al. nd ), and filing complaints ( Bell et al. 2022 ). While these papers make valuable contributions, none of them study actual outcomes but rather behaviors that are likely to influence take-up of benefits. The final working paper by Lasky-Fink and Linos (2023) offers a promising approach to dealing with some of the shortcomings of other research on this relationship. Contrary to the other working papers, the authors study actual take-up of welfare benefits and show that destigmatized language leads to substantially higher take-up rates. Moreover, contrary to studies linking state actions and take-up, the authors go one step further and use three survey experiments to make it probable that the mechanism linking state actions and take-up is psychological costs in the form of perceived stigma. In doing so, the working paper studies the whole causal chain from barriers over subjective experiences of administrative burdens to outcomes. This is a model for future studies to pursue because such studies will be able to show not only whether individuals experience burdens as a result of state actions, but also the extent to which these burdens subsequently influence service use or other relevant outcomes.

There is also a lack of studies that look beyond take-up and focus on other types of outcomes. In some instances, burdens may not discourage people from taking up public services, but they may still affect the adequacy and quality of services provided—in particular when citizens interact with the same public agency for a prolonged period of time ( Peeters and Campos 2021 ). Furthermore, inspired by the policy feedback literature, it has been suggested that experiences of burden may affect civic capacities such as political efficacy, trust in institutions, and civic engagement ( Christensen et al. 2020 ). However, no studies have so far examined these questions systematically.

Arrow 5: Feedback Effects: Experiences → Burden Tolerance and State Actions

While state actions are expected to trigger experiences of burdens in the original theoretical model, a few studies suggest a feedback effect, that is, experiences may influence burden tolerance and state actions. The argument is that knowledge about experiences may make policymakers and others understand the detrimental effects of state actions and hence induce less burden. This proposition finds mixed support in the three studies dealing with the question. In a survey-experimental study of Danish local politicians using a treatment cue about psychological costs experienced by target group members, Baekgaard, Moynihan, and Thomsen (2021) find no evidence of a feedback effect. Conversely, in a survey experiment, Halling and Petersen (nd) find that Danish frontline employees are more likely to reduce compliance demands in the implementation process and to help citizens who communicate psychological costs. Sievert and Bruder (2023) find mixed support in their study of the feedback effects of treatments increasing awareness of learning and compliance, costs among German citizens. While there is some evidence of feedback effects of compliance costs, exposing participants to information about learning costs does not affect burden tolerance. Finally, Gilad and Assouline (2022) do not study feedback effects directly, but rather a prerequisite of their existence, namely citizens voicing their experiences of burden. They find that citizens indeed voice their experiences to authorities but also that disadvantaged groups are less inclined to do so.

On balance, there is a need for much more research to establish the relevance of feedback effects. Such studies could investigate differences between groups of respondents (policymakers, frontline workers, citizens). They may also focus on the way in which information about experiences of burden is provided. Here, a distinction could be made between statistical and episodic information. Previous research has identified stronger effects of episodic data in other contexts ( Olsen 2017 ). Finally, studies could examine feedback effects from citizen outcomes.

Arrow 6: The Relationship Between Burden Tolerance and State Actions

The literature on burden tolerance presumes that tolerance among political decision-makers and the mass public influences the extent to which the state constructs burdens (e.g., Aarøe et al. 2021 ; Baekgaard, Moynihan, and Thomsen 2021 ; Keiser and Miller 2020 ; Nicholson-Crotty, Miller, and Keiser 2021 ). However, none of the studies in the review study the causal influence of burden tolerance on state actions, likely due to challenges obtaining causal estimates. Nevertheless, we indicate this relationship in figure 5 with a dashed line (arrow 6a) due to the strong theoretical expectation that burden tolerance influences the extent to which the state introduces burdens in public policies.

Alternatively, it is possible that knowledge about existing barriers influences the extent to which people are supportive of burdensome barriers (arrow 6b). Two empirical studies examine this question using survey experiments among the mass public. Keiser and Miller (2020) find that information about the presence of barriers increases support for welfare programs and their recipients, in particular among conservative voters. Nicholson-Crotty, Miller, and Keiser (2021) show that information about barriers has heterogeneous effects on program approval depending on whether the target group is perceived as deserving (information about more barriers reduces approval) or undeserving (information about barriers has no significant effect). While the two studies support the idea that information about state actions may influence burden tolerance, there is certainly room for more research about how state actions may influence burden tolerance in the mass public and among decision-makers. Such studies may for instance investigate how state actions are constructed in popular debates.

Arrow 7: Factors Shaping Burden Tolerance and State Actions

This section looks into other factors that shape burden tolerance and state actions. A total of seven studies examine factors shaping burden support, while 13 studies investigate factors shaping state actions. We deal with the questions jointly, because many of the key explanations are similar for burden tolerance and state actions. Overall, explanations can be divided into four broad categories.

First, a series of studies present evidence that burdens are constructed and that political ideological beliefs influence the extent to which barriers are introduced. For instance, the studies by Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey (2015) , Moynihan, Herd, and Ribgy (2016) , and Heinrich (2018) find that more barriers are introduced in states governed by conservatives than in states governed by liberals. Likewise, a series of cross-sectional studies find strong correlations between the ideological beliefs of politicians ( Baekgaard, Moynihan, and Thomsen 2021 ), street-level bureaucrats ( Bell et al. 2020 ), and the mass public ( Haeder, Sylvester, and Callaghan 2021 ; Halling, Herd, and Moynihan 2022 ) and their support for administrative burden policies.

Second, in accordance with the claim by Schneider and Ingram (1993) that target group construction matters to the benefits and burdens assigned to each group, target group deservingness and minority status appear to be of major importance to both burden tolerance ( Baekgaard, Moynihan, and Thomsen 2021 ; Haeder, Sylvester, and Callaghan 2021 ) and barriers ( Jilke, Van Dooren, and Rys 2018 ).

Third, a series of individual-specific explanations of burden tolerance have been investigated in the literature. Most factors have not been theorized very clearly, however, and have only been the subject in few empirical studies. Personal experience with benefits has been shown to be associated with less tolerance for burdensome state actions among Danish local politicians ( Baekgaard, Moynihan, and Thomse 2021 ) and a representative sample of US citizens ( Halling, Herd, and Moynihan 2022 ), while big five personality traits in the form of conscientiousness and openness to experiences have been shown to correlate with burden tolerance in the study of Aarøe et al. (2021) .

Fourth, studies of factors explaining variation in barriers find bureaucratic processes are likely to shape the barriers that citizens meet when interacting with the state. These studies are primarily based on discussions of specific exemplary cases. Peeters (2020) points out that barriers are likely to be unintentional in many cases. They can, for instance, be a result of very complex cases that make it impossible to ease application processes for citizens by means of automation ( Larsson 2021 ), or they can be unintended results of large-scale digitalization and automated decision-making processes where citizens who do not fit into predefined boxes face barriers in the implementation process ( Peeters and Widlak 2018 , 2023 ). Other studies show that bureaucratic low-trust culture and inertia may increase barriers that citizens face when interacting with government ( Bashir and Nisar 2020 ; Peeters et al. 2018 ).

Before we move on to the discussion of next steps to be taken, we note three limitations of our study. The first is publication bias. While we approached the field to include unpublished research, it is possible that some unpublished null findings have not been included or that published null findings did not show up in our literature search because publications with null findings on administrative burden hypotheses have been framed into other literatures. While we consider this a lesser concern given our extensive strategy for collecting studies, publication bias may have made evidence appear stronger than it is. The second limitation has to do with the qualitative coding of studies. While we adhere to stringent coding criteria and have conducted multiple rounds of cross-validating the coding, categorizing studies based on the kind of relationships they study is—at least for some studies—a matter of nuance and assessment. Third, the quality of the included studies is likely to vary, meaning that our review may not give an accurate picture of the strength of evidence for the many propositions studied in administrative burden research. While we have confidence in the general pattern of how different relationships have been covered, others may disagree with our coding of some studies and with the strength of evidence presented in these studies.

Limitations aside, our review points out where evidence is missing and suggests steps to be taken in future research. Next, we discuss which parts of our theoretical model warrant more empirical evidence before finishing with a discussion of new questions for future research to pursue.

More Evidence Needed

Our review points to several issues that should get more attention in future research. First, our understanding of people’s experiences is very much based on the deductive categorization of experiences as learning, compliance, and psychological costs developed in Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey (2015) . While this has laid the foundation for important research, future research could do more to supplement it with bottom-up qualitative research of what burdens are from the perspectives of those interacting with the state. Such research could also aid our understanding of what constitutes more important types of burdensome experiences and under what circumstances they arise. A good example of this kind of research is the work of Barnes (2021, nd ).

Second, it is a core claim of the administrative burden framework that what the state does is consequential for citizens’ experiences. Providing solid causal evidence about this relationship is therefore a key point for future research. Future studies could for instance rely on laboratory experiments inspired by the studies by Hattke, Hensel, and Kalucza 2020 and Hattke et al. (nd) . Another way forward may be to embed surveys and in-depth interviews as part of randomized field experiments to explore how changes in state action influence experiences and in turn outcomes. Here, the study by Lasky-Fink and Linos (2023) may also serve as an example to follow, as the authors combined their field experiment with survey experimental evidence to explore whether the impact of destigmatized language on take-up indeed was mediated by reduced perceived stigma as hypothesized by the authors.

Third, most studies examining this link are conducted among recipients of various social welfare benefits. However, experiences of burden are likely to arise in other types of interactions with the state as is evident from studies of, among others, digital government services ( Madsen, Lindgren, and Melin 2022 ) and voting rights ( Herd and Moynihan 2018 , 43–70; Selin 2019 ). To better understand the scope and importance of administrative burden, there is a need for studies that move beyond social welfare to investigate experiences of burdens in areas such as law enforcement, taxation, and regulation.

Fourth, research on how experiences of administrative burden affect outcomes such as welfare take-up, trust in government, health, and voting behavior is scarce. Most of the articles that study outcomes (primarily take-up) examine how they relate to state actions and not to experiences of burden. To get a more comprehensive picture of how burdensome encounters influence citizens’ lives, we encourage future studies to examine the link between experiences of burden and outcomes.

Fifth, the advancement of the burden tolerance concept allows researchers to examine the extent to which individuals support barriers. An important assumption is that the burden tolerance of policymakers and bureaucrats shapes the actual design of state actions, but it has never been empirically examined. Doing so would help ascertain whether burden tolerance is consequential for the actual design of polices.

Sixth, the administrative burden literature is diverse in terms of methods, policy areas, and subjects. Most studies are conducted in Western countries, but there are studies of burdens from other contexts such as Pakistan and Latin America. However, there is a general lack of comparative studies of burdens across countries and across policies, which would be valuable in terms of providing knowledge on the extent to which context matters for experiences of burden. Likewise, comparative studies of barriers or across policy areas could elucidate which types of state actions are most likely to produce experiences of burdens.

New Questions to Pursue

While we have presented a quite extensive model based on current administrative burden studies, there are still important questions that have received little to no attention in the literature. An important part of the framework formulated by Herd and Moynihan (2018) is that burdens are not inherently bad, and that they often serve legitimate purposes of protecting program integrity and avoiding fraud. While the issue of burden legitimacy has received some theoretical attention ( Doughty and Baehler 2020 ), empirical scholarship has yet to engage with it. One important question is how policymakers and citizens form preferences regarding program integrity vis à vis target group members’ onerous experiences. Studies on burden tolerance touch upon this question, but do not tackle it directly. Another question is how policymakers legitimize the existence of administrative burdens. Do they emphasize fraud protection, budget concerns, targeting the most deserving individuals, or something else? A third question that should get more attention is how actors outside the citizen–state interaction shape experiences of administrative burdens. A few studies show that various third parties such as NGOs and family members can influence experiences of burden, but the roles of these actors still warrant more attention. Further, civil society and the media may influence citizens’ experiences. For example, target group members are often negatively portrayed in the media ( Baekgaard, Herd, and Moynihan 2022 ; Schneider and Ingram 1993 ), which could increase their experiences of burden.

The administrative burden literature, while surprisingly clearly demarcated from other fields of research, has developed into a thematically and methodologically diverse research field within few years. Overall, our systematic review demonstrates that empirical research in the field generally supports the original three-fold claim made by Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey (2015) that burdens are consequential, constructed, and fall harder on groups with few resources. Yet, the review also demonstrates that the literature has moved past these claims in important ways. Based on our reading and coding of 119 articles and working papers, we build a comprehensive model of causal claims in the literature. The model illustrates different relationships that have been explored in the still nascent literature on administrative burdens, and it highlights several new theoretical insights gained since the founding work of Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey (2015) . First, experiences of administrative burdens are sometimes unrelated to how burdens are constructed by the state and instead rely on other factors such as frontline service delivery, government communication, unintended actions, and third parties. Second, the model highlights that factors beyond political ideology may affect the construction of state actions by introducing the concept of burden tolerance. Third, the model shows that factors such as personal experience with programs, personality traits, and the structure of bureaucratic processes affect individuals’ burden tolerance. Finally, the model illustrates a potential feedback effect of citizens’ experiences of administrative burden on policymakers’ burden tolerance.

Our systematic coverage of the administrative burden literature offers promising avenues for new research. First, we call for studies that causally link state actions and experiences of administrative burden, for studies that link experiences of burden to outcomes such as democratic behavior and take-up, and for studies that connect policymakers’ burden tolerance to actual state actions. Methodologically, we call for in-depth qualitative studies of how burdens are experienced by people taking part in citizen–state interactions and comparative studies. Last, we argue that important questions remain unexplored. One topic that future research should address is how policymakers, bureaucrats, and members of the public balance the legitimacy of public policies against target group members’ experiences of administrative burden. Is it acceptable to enhance experiences of administrative burdens to avoid fraud or to target the right populations? Another topic that warrants more attention is how actors outside the citizen–state interaction shape experiences of administrative burden. For example, we know that welfare recipients are often negatively constructed in the media and society ( Baekgaard, Herd, and Moynihan 2022 ; Schneider and Ingram 1993 ), yet we have limited knowledge about whether this leads to them experiencing administrative burdens to a larger extent when interacting with the state.

Supplementary data is available at the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory online.

We thank Arne Hørlück Høeg for providing excellent research assistance. We are also thankful for the great comments we received from participants at the Administrative Burden pre-conference workshop at the 2022 PMRC.

This work was supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 802244).

No new data were generated or analyzed in support of this research.

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As the only exception, we excluded Herd and Moynihan (2018) from the review. The main points in this book have been covered in several journal articles by the authors and including it would therefore introduce the risk of double-counting arguments.

Many of the working papers were later published. The initial number of working papers was 30.

Since this feedback effect is mainly inspired by policy feedback research, for the sake of simplicity we chose not to show this as an independent arrow in the model.

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