Bureaucratic overburdening has emerged as an important theme in public policy and administration research. The concept signifies a state where public administrators are overwhelmed with more tasks and responsibilities than they can effectively handle. Researchers attribute this phenomenon to several key factors, such as an increasing assault on the public sector, a growing volume of policies to enforce, and “external” shocks. These studies converge on the perception that the public sector's capacity to effectively implement policies and to address societal problems is progressively diminishing. However, there is a clear knowledge gap regarding the breadth, dynamics, and pervasiveness of this issue, as existing research often narrows its focus on the implementation of specific policies or policy sectors. This paper addresses this research gap by mapping the frequency of bureaucratic overload reports in newspaper articles from Italy, Ireland, and Germany, spanning two decades from 2003 to 2022. In the second step, we describe the drivers of overload that we coded in a random sample of articles. Our research reveals that the overburdening of public administration is indeed an escalating problem resulting from an “explosive” cocktail of external and internal challenges that simultaneously affect public authorities.

中文翻译：

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描绘官僚主义负担：三个欧洲国家媒体报道的动态和驱动因素


官僚负担过重已成为公共政策和行政研究的一个重要主题。这个概念意味着公共管理者被过多的任务和责任压得喘不过气来，超出了他们的有效处理能力。研究人员将这种现象归因于几个关键因素，例如对公共部门的攻击不断增加、需要执行的政策数量不断增加以及“外部”冲击。这些研究一致认为，公共部门有效执行政策和解决社会问题的能力正在逐渐减弱。然而，关于这个问题的广度、动态和普遍性，存在明显的知识差距，因为现有研究往往将重点缩小到具体政策或政策部门的实施。本文通过绘制 2003 年至 2022 年二十年间意大利、爱尔兰和德国报纸文章中官僚超载报告的频率来解决这一研究空白。第二步，我们描述了我们随机编码的超载驱动因素。文章样本。我们的研究表明，公共行政负担过重确实是一个不断升级的问题，是由同时影响公共当局的外部和内部挑战的“爆炸性”混合造成的。