Using a survey of nearly 2,000 federal government employees, we test the extent to which civil servants are willing to use their position to impose administrative burdens on political opponents. Such an act would create a burden of bad intentions. Rather than discovering that administrators are partisan actors through their use of burdens, we find that federal public employees support administrative burdens when they reduce fraud and waste. Furthermore, these civil servants are also not politically motivated. More precisely, federal government employees do not support administrative burdens that will give unequal benefits to members of their own political party or that will create uneven challenges for members of the opposition. Therefore, we theorize that administrators’ decisions relating to burden are motivated by a general concern for efficiency and ethics, even as decisions related to compliance and discretion may be divided into partisan lines.

中文翻译：

---

不良意图的负担：分析政治化的行政负担

通过对近 2,000 名联邦政府雇员的调查，我们测试了公务员愿意利用自己的职位向政治对手施加行政负担的程度。这种行为会造成不良意图的负担。我们没有发现行政人员通过使用负担而成为党派行为者，而是发现联邦公共雇员在减少欺诈和浪费时支持行政负担。此外，这些公务员也没有政治动机。更准确地说，联邦政府雇员不支持会给自己政党成员带来不平等利益或给反对派成员带来不平等挑战的行政负担。因此，我们推测，管理者关于负担的决策是出于对效率和道德的普遍关注，即使与合规性和自由裁量权相关的决策可能分为党派路线。