Bureaucracy: Navigating rules and risk

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Bureaucracy ensures that rules are followed reliably, but it can also act as a brake. The political scientist Professor Christoph Knill and legal scholar Professor Martin Burgi are members of the Research Focus „The future of democracy at the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) at LMU Munich. In this interview, they explain why we’re seeing more rules, where too many of them exist in everyday life, and how they can be scaled back without weakening the concept of the rule of law and the welfare state.

Bureaucracy has a bad reputation. From your perspective as a political scientist, how does excessive bureaucracy manifest itself, Mr. Knill?

Christoph Knill: I regard political incentives as the main driver of this. Governments want to show that they’re solving problems and so they pass new measures to demonstrate this. On the other hand, abolishing or replacing existing rules and regulations is unattractive. That’s because there are institutional hurdles, and there’s resistance from stakeholders who benefit from the existing rules. This is why the mountain of rules keeps growing.

In addition, politics often limits those who want to slim down the state, even though the tasks and duties continue to rise. This creates a gap between what needs to be regulated and controlled and what administrations are actually capable of doing. Three years ago, the Environment Agency in the UK stated publicly that it could no longer fulfil its role for this very reason.

Which mechanisms are driving the growth in bureaucracy from a legal perspective, Mr. Burgi?

Martin Burgi: I think this is mainly down to the complexity of modern problems. From a legal point of view, bureaucracy isn’t just the set of rules, but also the way these rules are implemented. Rules can only take effect through procedures, standards, monitoring and sanctions if necessary. And this is where a legitimate objective often collides with a complicated reality.

Take the regulation of supply chains as an example: supply chains today often span such a long distance internationally that companies find it almost impossible to be certain about the working conditions and environmental conditions that exist at the chain’s origin. This is why legislators are always looking for a lever they can pull in their own jurisdiction. Parallel sets of rules, for example at an EU level and nationally, produce a noticeable increase in bureaucracy.

What negative consequences may this kind of increase in bureaucracy have?

Martin Burgi: From a constitutional perspective, each rule or bureaucratic measure means an encroachment on individual freedoms. This is why you need to constantly question whether any action serves an important public purpose and whether it regulates more than is necessary.

In everyday life, I see negative consequences where bureaucracy slows down processes and ties up resources. When the processes for completing applications, filling job vacancies or submitting statements of travel expenses become ever more intricate, bureaucracy is no longer just a hassle, but gets in the way of the actual work.

When rules conflict

Christoph Knill: Additional burdens arise because rules don’t just apply individually but are layered one on top of the other. A practical check of photovoltaic permits identified around 70 conflicting legal provisions, including stipulations relating to nature conservation and building law.

It’s not just about filling in an extra form, but about complex legal and administrative correlations that require lengthy consultations. Investments take longer, projects become more expensive or will ultimately fail. This is how bureaucracy can act as a brake that slows down growth.

The Benefits of Bureaucracy

Why do we still need bureaucracy?

Christoph Knill: A functioning bureaucracy provides the foundation to ensure that rules apply reliably and to allow us to find solutions to society’s problems (e.g. environmental pollution or unstable financial markets). Rules governing the environment and social security as well as basic rights provide protection and stability. If they don’t exist, you have dysfunctional outcomes such as corruption and a lack of legal certainty. And this in turn inhibits economic development. The public debate almost always focuses exclusively on the disadvantages of bureaucracy; there’s rarely any discussion of the benefit it brings.

Martin Burgi: Bureaucracy is often the fundamental bedrock that enables basic rights and standards to apply reliably across society. If I want to safeguard a welfare state, environmental standards and fair competition, I need an enforcement mechanism that will actually implement the rules.

Reduce bureaucracy

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How can governments and administrations dismantle bureaucracy without jeopardizing these standards?

Martin Burgi: I prefer the image of scaling back rather than dismantling. It’s a bit like the work of a gardener: He regularly checks to see where uncontrolled growth has become too dense on a bush or shrub. Then he cuts it back to allow air and light to get in again. And sometimes he’ll plant a new seedling when the requirements in the bed change.

If this kind of scaling back is to succeed, I need to allow more personal responsibility and accept risks in some places. In particular, there needs to be greater involvement of the enforcement level, especially the municipalities, because they have the expertise and bear the consequences. And you need to avoid a situation where the process of scaling back bureaucracy produces even more bureaucracy, for example if you introduce new procedures that cost money and delay decisions.

Christoph Knill: It’s often more helpful to identify and untangle a few key knots in the set of rules than to scratch the surface in lots of different places and then only achieve a few improvements here and there. This will not only get rid of rules, but also correlations between these rules, and the reduction in bureaucracy will then be much more noticeable. And if you involve the people who will go on to implement the laws systematically at an early stage, this will give due consideration to the costs, feasibility and typical points of friction right from the outset. You then won’t need to make as many adjustments at a later stage. In Germany, this is particularly difficult because of the federal structure. Although many rules are drawn up at a federal level, it’s the states and municipalities that have to implement them. Mechanisms that allow for systematic involvement of the implementation level are scarcely developed.

Many people consider Germany to be particularly bureaucratic. How does it compare internationally?

Christoph Knill: In our studies, which are focused primarily on highly developed industrialized countries, Germany is in the middle of the pack when it comes to the level of bureaucracy. The growth in bureaucracy is much more pronounced in Italy or Portugal, but there are also examples of problematic developments in England. One country that performs very well is Denmark, where the level of coordination between lawmakers and those tasked with enforcing the laws is very strong.

Martin Burgi: Nevertheless, in Germany there are now specific packages and tools for reducing bureaucracy, such as the “Federal Modernization Agenda” that was adopted in December. But many of the ideas for scaling back are risky if they’re not implemented wisely. One example is the instrument under administrative law known as assumption of approval: This stipulates that applications are deemed to be approved if an office hasn’t made a decision within a certain time period. This may speed up processes, but it mustn’t lead to a situation where fundamental points remain unchecked, such as in relation to fire safety.

What I see in Germany is a culture of taking rules very seriously. This is a strength. But if the rulebook is very large, it becomes a burden because processes are followed more strictly than elsewhere. One example of this is the fact that the same EU directive applies in all member states of the European Union, but it’s implemented with varying degrees of compliance.

Digitizing bureaucratic processes

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Can digitization and AI help reduce bureaucracy?

Christoph Knill: Digitization can make workflows more efficient if it speeds up processes and enables more cases to be processed using the same level of resources. But it doesn’t resolve the fundamental dynamics of the increase in the number of rules. AI may be helpful in cases that can be standardized. In complex procedures, on the other hand, I think it’s unrealistic to expect that it can fully replace the bureaucratic decision-making process.

Martin Burgi: In addition, there can be frustration during the introductory phase because unstable systems and new requirements will initially produce a greater workload. But once systems are up and running, they can make it easier to replace things and reduce duplication of the same task. Here too, the same basic consideration remains. When more trust is given to citizens, this reduces the mountain of rules, but the state also accepts more risk, for example when it comes to data protection. Everything can be made more secure with lots of verification steps, for example proofs of identity. But if users find the whole process too complicated, they’ll ultimately end up going back to their local town hall to fill in their form by hand.

Professor Christoph Knill is Chair of Empirical Theories of Politics at LMU. His areas of research interest include political change, the transformation in administrative systems at a nation state level as a result of Europeanization and internationalization, and the relationship between administration and policy-making. His book entitled Triage Bureaucracy. The Organizational Challenge of Implementing Growing Policy Stocks is available through open access from Cambridge University Press

Professor Martin Burgi is Chair of Public Law, Business Administrative Law, Environmental and Social Security Law at LMU. He is also head of the Research Center for Procurement Law and Administrative Cooperation in the Faculty of Law. Burgi’s academic research focuses on public commercial law, energy and environmental law, the modernization of administrative law and municipal law. In December, his article entitled Orientierungs- und Entscheidungshilfe Bürokratierückbau (Guidance and Decision-Making Aid for Scaling Back Bureaucracy) was published in Germany’s Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (New Legal Weekly Journal) 2025, issue 41.