Since first described in 2012 (Burden et al., 2012), the concept of administrative burden has gained significant traction and now represents a major research theme in public administration. Several attempts have been made to differentiate and organise this emerging literature, with Baekgaard and Tankink (2022) reviewing the literature and measurement techniques, and Halling and Baekgaard (2024) providing a systematic review of the field with an emphasis on causative relationships. We find, however, that further conceptual clarity is needed to organise the growing empirical evidence base and to better understand how burdens and exclusions relate. This paper builds on these existing efforts to organise the field, identifying 130 empirical studies of citizen–state frictions resulting in administrative burden across policy areas, countries and methods. We focus on delineating empirical work along two dimensions: whether administrative costs remain burdens to be overcome or become so burdensome they form a version of administrative exclusion; and the administrative level at which they operate — street-level, organisational, or governmental. In doing so, we develop the concept of regimes of burdens: interconnecting arrangements of burdens and exclusions that operate across levels, often building cumulatively to become insurmountable for citizens. We subsequently map the variety of burdens and exclusions to a matrix to demonstrate how actually-existing burdens and exclusions are produced and layered across citizen–state relations. The matrix helps identify areas requiring further investigation, provides a practical tool for mapping the interaction of burdens and exclusions, enables comparison across programs, and highlights potential leverage points for administrative burden reduction.
