Representative Bureaucracy in Theory and Practice

To the extent that societies have become more diverse and struggle with their inclusiveness, the theory and practice of representative bureaucracy becomes more significant to students of comparative government and public administration. Ensuring equity of public policy making and implementation among social groups (whether based on race/ethnicity, language, religion, class, gender or other social cleavage lines) is an essential goal of democratic government. One way to achieve greater inclusiveness, so it has been argued by the ‘representative bureaucracy’ literature, is by ensuring that different societal groups are represented in the public sector workforce. At the same time, the emphasis on (minority) group representation in the public service may also inherently clash with established Weberian principles of public administration or with reform recipes along managerial and market-oriented lines. So, the concept of representative bureaucracy raises questions about the link between the socio-demographic make-up of public bureaucracies, government responsiveness and administrative accountability as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of public policy making and implementation.
The panel is geared to explore the drivers and possible consequences of ‘representativeness’ – or the lack of it – for the quality of service delivery, for relations to citizens, and for the diversity management within public organizations. In particular, we are also interested in the wider implications for the levels of public trust, the accountability and legitimacy of government, and for power-sharing arrangements in state and society.