Bureaucratic Quality and the Gap between Implementation Burden and Administrative Capacities

Abstract

Democratic governments produce more policies than they can effectively implement. Yet, this gap between the number of policies requiring implementation and the administrative capacities available to do so is not the same in all democracies but varies across countries and sectors. We argue that this variation depends on the coupling of the sectoral bureaucracies in charge of policy formulation and those in charge of policy implementation. We consider these patterns of vertical policy-process integration an important feature of bureaucratic quality. The more the policymaking level is involved in policy implementation (top-down integration) and the easier the policy-implementing level finds it to feed its concerns into policymaking (bottom-up integration), the smaller the so-called “burden-capacity gap.” We demonstrate this effect through an empirical analysis in 21 OECD countries over a period of more than 40 years in the areas of social and environmental policies.

Bureaucratic overburdening in advanced democracies

“…On the other hand, policies also have negative effects by putting additional burdens on public administrations. As bureaucracies have to implement additional policies, they need to redeploy existing resources for the implementation of those new policies – a development that ultimately leaves fewer resources for the implementation of existing ones (Fernández‐i‐Marín et al, 2023a; Limberg et al, 2021). For instance, agencies tasked with monitoring new pollutants in remote regions might be forced to reduce their monitoring activities in other areas (Kaplaner & Steinebach, 2024).…”

“…We proceed in two steps. In the first step, we establish the general relationship between the (size of) environmental policy portfolios (our independent variable), the ratio between administrative burdens and capacities (our moderating variable), and environmental policy effectiveness (our dependent variable) (see also Fernández‐i‐Marín et al 2023a, 2023b). In the second step, we use this model to predict what additional policies would imply for policy effectiveness in the countries under study 3…”

Do parties matter for policy accumulation? An analysis of social policy portfolios in 22 countries

“…In this regard, the academic debate is still in its infancy. Existing scholarly contributions have primarily concentrated on institutional factors that might affect the dynamics of policy growth, including bureaucratic capacities or the patterns of vertical coordination between policy‐producing and policy‐implementing bureaucracies (Fernández‐i‐Marín, Knill, et al., 2023; Knill et al., 2021). Moreover, studies on rule growth have placed particular emphasis on endogenous growth dynamics, arguing that rules, once adopted, create a constant need for the development of additional laws and regulations (‘rules breed rules’) (March et al., 2000; van Witteloostuijn & de Jong, 2010).…”