The Sustaining Public Administration in Modern Democracies (SUPA) project examines strategies for enhancing the capabilities of the public sector to cope with the escalating challenges of administrative overburdening.

The “Sustaining Public Administration in Modern Democracies“ (SUPA) Consortium originates from the observation that public administrations in advanced democracies are increasingly overburdened. Administrative overburdening arises from a continuous increase in the number of rules that require implementation and the relative stagnation in administrative capacities. This discrepancy between the rules up for implementation and the administrative resources available results in suboptimal policy outcomes, low-quality public services, and inconsistent implementation practices. In view of this assessment, it is the central objective of SUPA to examine strategies for enhancing the capabilities of the public sector to cope with the escalating challenges of administrative overburdening. To this end, SUPA pursues two interrelated objectives: The first one is to examine how decision-making procedures and practices can be improved to limit the overall burdens placed on the administration. The second goal is to explore how administrative structures can be reformed to manage ongoing rule growth effectively. SUPA examines patterns of rule growth and the resulting administrative changes and challenges in six European States (Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Spain and the Netherlands) and the European Union. Based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, SUPA (1) evaluates the effectiveness of so-called "rule-offsetting" schemes; (2) investigates how legislators can embed legal design principles to prevent unintended rule growth cascades; (3) assesses how policy growth affects the underlying administrative structures; and (4) examines citizens' experience and operational challenges linked to different ways of distributing implementation burdens across public authorities. SUPA has formed collaboration agreements with multiple public authorities, ensuring that the Consortium's findings can be directly transferred to both policy-makers and administrators in the field.