Measuring Administrative Burden: Bringing the State “Back in” as a Reflexive Actor in Burden Reduction

ABSTRACT This study examines how governments measure administrative burdens in citizen–state interactions. Although scholarly interest in the burden framework has grown, little is known about how states themselves track and reduce these costs. A scoping review of 38 academic and gray sources, complemented by interviews with 11 experts, identifies six measurement approaches currently in use. An analysis of their indicators and data shows that all six capture burdens only partially: none encompasses all four dimensions—time, money, effort, and psychological—and none integrates both subjective and objective data for each. These tools reflect narrow, fragmented understandings of what burdens are and how they are experienced, highlighting the need for stronger alignment between conceptual advances, measurement practices, and policy efforts. Drawing on our findings, we propose three policy recommendations to enhance burden measurement and outline three research directions to further the study of how governments monitor, interpret, and mitigate the burdens they produce.