Bureaucratic Redundancy and Administrative Burden: Evidence from Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in China

Wei Xiong1|  Feng Wang2|  Tom Christensen3|Carter B. Casady4,5,6

Abstract

Administrative burden is experienced by both individualsand businesses when dealing with government entities.While previous literature suggests administrative burdenarises from the deliberate choices of political actors, thisstudy highlights how bureaucratic redundancies also lead toadministrative burden. Using a dataset of public-privatepartnerships (PPPs) in China, this study explored the influ-ence of bureaucratic redundancy on administrative burden,in particular contractors' compliance costs caused by PPPregulations. The analysis found that bureaucratic redun-dancy has a positive and curvilinear relationship with com-pliance costs, which in turn has a positive relationship withthe likelihood of PPP contract termination. These resultshold even after controlling for political and economic fac-tors. Nevertheless, such effects can be mitigated throughgovernment reforms, such as jurisdictional reduction andlegislative centralization