Fudan-LSE Lecture Series No.50

Title: 

Administrative Burdens in Public Service Provision

Speaker: 

Prof. Tom Christensen, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo

Host: 

Prof. Yijia Jing, IGPP, Fudan University

Cohost：

Fudan-European Centre for China Studies；Nordic Centre

Nordic Centre at Fudan University

Time: 

12:00-13:20 (Beijing Time), March 15th

Venue: 

Room 805E, 8thFloor，West Sub-building of Guanghua Towers

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The Speaker：

Professor Christensen is Professor Emeritus at Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. He has 40 years of experience in the field of Public Administration and he is a world renowned professor in this field with an academic production of around 200 international articles and 20-25 books. His main theoretical basis is organization theory, influenced by his many stays at Stanford University, and he has empirically focused on studies of central administrative structures and public sector reforms, including studies of sectors like crisis management, police, welfare administration, universities, heath (COVID-19), but also studies of trust, accountability, reputation management, etc. Christensen has spent 30 years of teaching in China, and published 40 international articles with Chinese colleagues. He is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua and Visiting Professor at HUST.

Abstract: 

The lecture will first define what is really meant by administrative burdens in public service provision, followed by a discussion of three types of related costs-learning, compliance and psychological costs. Then it will be explained how administrative burdens are related to diverse bureaucratic encounters. Related to this it will be described why administrative burdens are consequential, distributed and constructed. The lecture is ending with outlining three perspectives on administrative burdens from organization theory-instrumental, cultural and demographic.