Representative bureaucracy: An experimental approach

Introduction Representative bureaucracy as a topic within the field of public administration and management reaches back more than half a century to the work of J. Donald Kingsley (1944). The initial work approached the topic descriptively and normatively, asking to what extent is the bureaucracy representative of the people it serves and to what extent should it be. More recent research has examined the positive effects or outcomes of a representative bureaucracy, with much of the work focused on the consequences for women and racial minorities (see, e.g., Meier and Nicholson-Crotty 2006; Riccucci and Meyers 2004; Selden 1997; Sowa and Selden 2003; Wilkins 2007). In our joint work, which we review in this chapter, we have attempted to take an experimental approach to the study of representative bureaucracy. This experimental work, which to date has focused on gender representation, aims to better understand the causal mechanisms linking representativeness of an agency with changes in the attitudes and behaviours of citizens. This chapter begins with an overview of the previous research on representative bureaucracy within the field of public administration and management. We then discuss our methodological and theoretical motivation for trying an experimental approach to representative bureaucracy. This is followed by a summary of three experiments that we have designed and implemented to test representation effects, with a focus on gender representation. This chapter concludes with our reflections on the advantages and limitations of experimentation in this topic area, as well as suggestions for future research. Overview of the Previous (Non-experimental) Literature Representative bureaucracy has been an important area of research in public administration and management for decades. First advanced by Kingsley in 1944, the theory holds that bureaucracies that are representative of the people they serve will be more effective in meeting the needs and interests of the citizenry. At its core is the notion that not only elected bodies but the bureaucracy as well has the institutional power to engage in public policy making, thus fulfilling representational obligations to the public. Kingsley's original work focused on the restricted social background of the UK Civil Service, calling this elite the ‘new aristocracy’ and arguing that for bureaucracies to be truly democratic they instead needed to represent the groups whom they served (1944: 305).