Administrative exclusion in the infrastructure-level bureaucracy: The case of the Dutch daycare benefit scandal

Abstract

A key insight in the literature on administrative burdens and exclusion is that they can be a form of policy making by other means to disincentivize people's access to services, rights, and benefits. Using the case of the Dutch daycare benefit scandal, in which tens of thousands of citizens were wrongfully accused of welfare fraud and subsequently excluded from benefits, we argue for a broader understanding of the way administrative burdens can be constructed. We introduce the concept of the ‘infrastructure-level bureaucracy’ to understand how new forms of intra- and supra-organizational data exchange and algorithmic analysis can lead bureaucracies to fail to understand the reasoning underlying their own administrative decisions and, subsequently, cause Kafkaesque situations for citizens. Our findings point towards the importance of institutional analyses of the way information technologies structure political and operational behavior as well as the burdens that citizens may face in their interactions with the state.