Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Pamela Herd

Tools of Coercion and Control: The Politics of Administrative Burden

Pamela Herd, Carol Kakalec Kohn Professor of Social Policy, University of Michigan

Abstract: Administrative burdens are peoples' onerous experiences interacting with the state. They enact costs, ranging from the time and money people spend navigating these bureaucratic processes to the frustration, fear, and anxiety caused by those negative experiences.  Burdens can be a result of either technocratic problems or deliberate choices designed to reinforce inequality. I examine the transition from the Biden to the Trump Administration to describe these two sources of burden. The Biden Administration, via a slate of Executive orders, worked to improve access to rights and benefits, from passports to social welfare, by both simplifying and automating administrative processes, a kind of technocratic approach to reducing inequality.  In contrast, the Trump Administration has strategically employed burdens as political tools to engage in "policymaking by other means."  While the Biden Administration expanded access to social welfare rights, like health care and income supports, by reducing administrative burdens, the Trump Administration has leveraged burdens as political tools to reduce access to a wide array of rights, ranging from health care to immigration. Here, burdens have been employed as tools of coercion and control, masking true intentions behind seemingly benign and legitimate bureaucratic practices. Attending to administrative burden—including their technocratic and political dimensions—provides insight into how the state generates and maintains social inequality. 

Pamela Herd is the Carol Kakalec Kohn Professor of Social Policy and faculty associate at the Institute for Social Research Population Studies Center. Her research focuses on inequality and how it intersects with health, aging, and policy. She is also an expert in survey research and biodemographic methods. She is currently one of the Co-Principal Investigators for General Social Survey, an Investigator with the Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey, and Chair of the NIH Data Advisory Board for the National Study of Adolescent Health. Professor Herd also researches administrative burden, or the bureaucratic obstacles that people encounter when trying to access government benefits, services, and rights. She is especially interested in how this burden is both shaped by and further reinforces inequality. Her book Administrative Burden, Policymaking by Other Means has received numerous awards, was reviewed in the New York Review of Books, and has helped influence state and federal policy reforms, including recent executive orders by the Biden Administration. She frequently writes and speaks on these topics to media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, NPR, and the PBS NewsHour. In addition to her book awards, Professor Herd has received the Outstanding Public Engagement in Health Policy Award from the American Political Science Association, the Kohl Award, the AARP Innovation Award, and the Wilder School Award for Scholarship in Social Equity in Public Policy Analysis, given by the National Academy of Public Administration.