Minority Groups in Public Bureaucracies

Abstract

Do minority civil servants actively represent the minority community more than white officials do ? Many observers express doubts. Clearly, there are formidable barriers to nonwhite civil servants acting as representatives of their racial groups. Nonetheless, existing evidence suggests that nonwhite officials do serve in this capacity under certain circumstances. A major task for students of public administration is to specify what these circumstances are. The author notes several societal and job related factors which increase prospects that minority officials will actively represent their racial communities.

The politics of redistribution in local governments: the effect of gender representation on welfare spending in California counties

“…Minority bureaucrats can produce substantive benefits for their social groups directly through their own administrative behaviour and indirectly by influencing others' behaviours (Lim 2006). 8 However, scholars warn against potential threats to the democratic principles and a flawed conceptual foundation (Thompson 1976;Lim 2006). 9 There are direct sources of substantive effects, such as bureaucratic partiality, shared value and beliefs and empathic understanding, as well as indirect sources, such as colleague pressures, demand inducement and coproduction inducement (Lim 2006).…”

Race, Gender, and Government Contracting: Different Explanations or New Prospects for Theory?

“…Despite the abundance of formalization regulating federal procurement activities, ample opportunity remains for the exercise of administrative discretion in the awarding of federal contracts, including those going to small disadvantaged businesses and women‐owned small businesses. This is a salient issue for the study of representative bureaucracy insofar as active representation is more likely to occur when public managers are granted significant amounts of administrative discretion (Thompson ).…”

“…The answer is yes on both counts. The norms and values of a particular agency may crowd out preferences for individuals over time as they gain experience working for an agency (Thompson ). This is important because prevailing norms influence the behavior of decision makers (Hogg and Reid ; Terry and Hogg ; Wilkins and Williams ).…”

Zen and the Art of Policy Analysis: A Response to Nielsen and Wolf

“…This contention reveals that Nielsen and Wolf are unfamiliar with the literature on representative bureaucracy which provides both theoretical and empirical evidence why a critical mass is needed for effective representation in some organizations. Theoretically, organizational incentives create pressures on minorities to conform and not press minority issues until their number is sufficient to provide support for such decisions (Thompson 1976;Meier 1993). The empirical literature provides several supporting findings: a large number of minority teachers is positively associated with the election of minority school board members (Meier and Smith 1994) and minority board members provide political support for minority teachers (Meier 1993;Henderson 1979), minority teachers are the recruitment base for minority administrators and a critical mass of administrators generates more active representation (Meier and Stewart 1991;Meier 1993), organizational processes in education, particularly grouping and tracking, are slow to change and changes in these policies is far easier when minorities become a majority (Meier and Stewart 1991;Meier, Stewart and England 1989), representation is a function of organizational roles (Selden, Brudney, and Kellough, 1997) and active representation roles are easier to establish in bureaucracies with more minorities.…”