When do bureaucrats choose to unburden clients: A randomized experiment
通过一项针对580名美国公共管理者的随机实验，研究发现官僚更倾向于利用自由裁量权减轻年龄较大（而非种族）的弱势群体的行政负担，且自我效能感高的官僚反而更少这样做。
Abstract Prior work refers to burdens in citizen‐state interactions as administrative, even though most originate from the desk of politicians, not administrators. Even more, bureaucrats often act to unburden their clients via the discretionary powers they wield. This perspective has largely been overlooked in extant research. The present study asks under what conditions bureaucrats alleviate the burdens levied by elected officials on their clients. We propose that bureaucrats are more likely to use their discretion to unburden the most vulnerable groups. The study models vulnerability in terms of age and race, using two single‐factorial randomized experiments on a sample of 580 U.S. public managers in a COVID‐19 rental assistance setting. We find that client vulnerability drives bureaucrats' intent to unburden, but only in the context of age, not race. Also, the more administrators perceive themselves as public representatives, the higher their intention to unburden aid seekers. By contrast, bureaucrats with higher self‐efficacy tend to unburden less.