Public Management Review

Administrative Inequality: Conceptualization and Micro-Mechanisms

Across the globe, public administrations profoundly shape patterns of social and political inequality, not only through redistributive policy design, but through organizational routines, and the micro-level actions and decisions of administrators themselves (Piketty 2014; Atkinson 2015). Administrative systems distribute resources, enforce rules, and provide services in ways that can produce disadvantage or privilege (Epp et al. 2017; Assouline, Gilad & Ben-Nun Bloom 2022; Thomann & Rapp 2018; Eckhard 2021). The design and implementation of even seemingly neutral procedures – such as eligibility checks, communication routines, or digital algorithms – can produce unequal outcomes by imposing disproportionate burdens or biases on particular social groups (Bell et al. 2024; Friedrich & Eckhard 2025; Haitsma & Bouwmeester 2023).

The starting point for this special issue is the observation that phenomenon of (un)equal citizen treatment tends to be studied in silos and on different levels of the administrative system—such as organizational processes and procedures or street-level bureaucratic discretion. Scholarship is fragmented across subfields such as representative bureaucracy (Meier 2019; Riccucci & Van Ryzin 2017), bureaucratic discrimination (Adam et al. 2021; Dovidio et al. 2010), administrative burden (Moynihan, Herd & Harvey 2015; Herd & Moynihan 2018), social equity (Frederickson 1990; Cepiku & Mastrodascio 2021), and public sector corruption (Nieto-Morales, Peeters & Lotta 2024). Because these literatures have evolved in isolation, the field is at risk of conceptual conflation: similar mechanisms carry different labels, different phenomena travel under the same label, and consequently, empirical findings fail to accumulate into a coherent understanding of when and why administration treats citizens unequally.

Our vision – and the ambition of this special issue – is that the concept of administrative inequality can provide a unifying conceptual perspective on these debates. For the concept to perform this integrative function, it requires a precise normative and analytical reference point. We anchor it in citizens’ equal opportunity to access public services, and define it as follows:

Administrative inequality denotes any administrative rule, process, or behavior – whether intentional or unintentional, rooted in formal-legal structures or in discretionary conduct – that systematically impedes citizens’ equal opportunity to access and obtain the public services and entitlements to which they have a claim.

This reference point is grounded in theories of equality of opportunity (Rawls 1971; Rothstein & Uslaner 2005). On this view, inequalities are normatively problematic when they are attributable to circumstances beyond a person’s control – such as group membership, social origin, resources, or place of residence – rather than to individual choices (Roemer 1998). Applied to public administration, the state is obliged to ensure that citizens with an equal legal claim to a service face an equal effective opportunity to obtain it, irrespective of such circumstances (Mashaw 1983). Differentiation that is prescribed by democratically legitimated policy, such as progressive taxation or needs-based prioritization, realizes rather than violates equal opportunity. Administrative inequality arises only where equally entitled citizens face unequal effective access due to unequal treatment, or their limited capacity to cope with the inequitable demands of the administrative system. The concept therefore echoes the legal principle of equal treatment as well as the social equity tradition, which demands differential treatment based on diverse needs (Frederickson 1990).

Analytically, administrative inequality directs attention to the observable rules, processes, and behaviors through which differential access is (re)produced in practice, whether at the front line (Maynard-Moody & Musheno 2012; Brodkin 2011; Tummers et al. 2015) or within ministerial bureaucracies where administrative regulations are produced. It aims at relating micro-level behavioral mechanisms to the organizational and systemic conditions under which they unfold, and to study how legal rules, organizational routines, and street-level behavior jointly produce (un)equal access.

Our definition of administrative inequality also highlights ambivalences that Western-centric assumptions typically obscure. For instance, in consolidated welfare states, petty corruption that conditions access on bribes or connections is typically seen as restricting equal access. Yet where formal institutions carry exclusionary legacies – as in many post-colonial states, whose administrative apparatus was historically built to serve a narrow elite (Angeles & Neanidis 2015) – informal payments, and intermediaries can function as a compensatory access channel through which otherwise excluded groups “buy” entry to services from which formal rules or their application would bar them (cf. Nieto-Morales, Peeters & Lotta 2024). From an equal-access perspective, such practices widen access relative to a formally exclusionary baseline, while creating also new restrictions. Moreover, even within Western countries there may be a tension between the provision of one-fits-all services, and the preference of some groups for culturally-adjusted services through community and religious intermediaries who may reject the state’s standards and liberal values. Whether a given administrative mechanism enables or undermines inequality is thus an empirical question that varies across governance contexts, and service recipients – a question this special issue explicitly places on its agenda.

By connecting the literature’s diverse perspectives through this shared reference point, the proposed special issue aims to:

• Build a shared conceptual framework that integrates behavioral, organizational, and structural perspectives on inequality in administration around the benchmark of equal opportunity of access;
• illuminate the micro-foundations of administrative behavior that impede, sustain or restore equal access in practice given individuals’ differential resources and cultural norms; and
• advance a comparative research agenda spanning contexts from Europe to the Global South, where weak state capacity, informality, relational processes or colonial institutional legacies may cause structurally different forms on administrative inequality – and we particularly welcome contributions theorizing these configurations.

Understanding administrative inequality in this sense is also consequential for public value creation: services can only create value for those who effectively obtain them (Bozeman 2019). Unequal access thus constitutes a first-order constraint on the capacity of public organizations to create value for society, and equalizing access a managerial lever for doing so. Ultimately, this special issue aims to demonstrate how a shared understanding of administrative inequality is essential for managerial reform, organizational design, and governance innovation aimed at producing equitable public outcomes.

The special issue comes at a critical time. The growing reliance on automated decision-making, performance management systems, and data-driven governance intensifies the need to understand how administrative processes translate into unequal outcomes. As public organizations increasingly formalize discretion through algorithms and managerial instruments, the mechanisms of administrative inequality may become less visible yet more entrenched. This makes a systematic, micro-mechanism-focused research agenda both timely and necessary.

Scope and Contributions

The special issue invites theoretical, conceptual, or empirical contributions engaging with the concept of ‘administrative inequality’ and addressing how and why administrative systems produce, reproduce, or mitigate inequality. We welcome interdisciplinary work connecting public administration, management, political science, psychology, and sociology.

To ensure coherence across contributions, we will ask all submissions to make three elements explicit: (i) the access or opportunity at stake and the population of equally entitled citizens under analysis; (ii) the mechanism – behavioural, legal-procedural, organizational, or other – that impede or restore equal access; and (iii) the level(s) of analysis and how micro-level mechanisms relate to organizational and systemic conditions.

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Conceptual integration: Clarifying how administrative inequality unifies and extends existing theories of public management and governance.
• Empirical studies: Case studies, surveys, or comparative analyses demonstrating how administrative processes and behaviors produce individuals’ differential access across contexts.
• Intervention studies: Field experiments (or related) demonstrating how certain interventions in administrative procedures or action impact equality of access and its distributive outcomes.
• Normative inquiry: Examining trade-offs between equal treatment, equal access and equity in administrative behavior, including implications for legitimacy, accountability, and public value creation.
• Methodological innovation: Mixed-method or data-driven approaches (e.g., text mining, AI auditing) to capture inequality-generating processes within administrative systems.
• AI and digital governance: Exploring how automated decision-making reconfigures the balance between equal treatment and equal access in service delivery.

(download list of references at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_5zXyBMbKzytouZUa8oupMXHviCdLiEP/view?usp=sharing)