Microfoundations of Active Representation in Public Bureaucracies: Evidence From a Survey of Personnel Recruitment in the Swiss Federal Civil Service (original) (raw)
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The federal government acknowledges minority underrepresentation in the Senior Executive Service (SES) level position is a persistent problem. Why do policymakers adopt certain solutions and initiatives to address this problem? Federal agencies copy the private sector's best practices to legitimize the solutions and initiatives such as mentoring, succession planning, and diversity initiatives, further legitimizing themselves solutions to address this problem until 1993 when deliberate inclusion was eliminated with by removing these initiatives and requirements. Using content analysis, my primary data were 14 documents from a 17-year period, 1994-2011. I assessed how often solutions or initiatives were selected by policymakers to determine prevalence. I suggest, in search of legitimacy, initiatives are selected outside their initial context and these solutions and initiatives have shifting justifications with convergence across time. Findings in this study indicate the most prevalent solution or initiative is workforce and succession planning strategies. The justification most often used was not best practices as I suggested but Representative Bureaucracy, which was contextually relevant in addressing SES. There was pattern of shifting justifications when selecting solutions and initiatives but no pattern of convergence across time. One interesting finding in this study was the prevalence of seven out of 16 solutions and initiatives were recommended by a cross-section of policymakers over a 17-year period, which may suggests mimetic influences are without contextually relevant solutions.
Representative Bureaucracy: Assessing the Evidence on Active Representation
The American Review of Public Administration, 2010
The theory of representative bureaucracy suggests that a public workforce representative of the people in terms of race, ethnicity, and sex will help ensure that the interests of all groups are considered in bureaucratic decision-making processes. The theory posits that the active representation of group interests occurs because individual bureaucrats reflect the views of those who share their demographic backgrounds. Research in the public administration literature, however, includes only a relatively small number of studies providing evidence consistent with active representation. In addition, that literature is, for the most part, composed of studies that are conducted at an organizational level, making it impossible for us to draw inferences about the behavior of individual bureaucrats without committing an ecological fallacy. Researchers in the field of criminal justice studies, on the other hand, have long tested the relationship between workforce demography and government out...
Recruitment in public administrations: diversity policies and selection practices in a French city
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2017
This paper presents the results of an ethnographic study of recruitment processes in the public service of a French city. It begins by engaging with the existing literature on representative bureaucracy and discrimination of members of minority groups and then surveys some of the existing literature on French exceptionalism in this domain. Based on an analysis of gatekeeping practices and recruitment, set off against the numerical under-representation of candidates with an immigration background, the paper argues that a series of seemingly minor mechanisms help to explain why so few of these candidates are being selected. It concludes by arguing that the empirical study of these mechanisms provides avenues for strategic interventions in selection processes aiming to create more genuine equal opportunities for members of minority groups.
Public Management Review, 2020
This article examines whether an increase in ethnic representativeness at various hierarchical ranks can have different impacts on organizational performance. Data were collected from the British police force that implemented force-specific targets for recruiting officers from ethnic minority backgrounds during 2000-2010. Findings suggest that the benefits of representative bureaucracy are greater when (a) the proportion of minority officers is greater, (b) their average rank is higher in the hierarchical ladder, and (c) they are equally dispersed across different ranks. We also show that representation among street-level officers is a necessary condition for deriving the benefits of representative bureaucracy. Although we failed to find strong support for the independent impact of representation in leadership positions, we did find a large moderating impact; the effect of minority representation among street-level officers is significantly magnified by the presence of minorities in middle-and upper-level positions.
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
Although a voluminous literature on representative bureaucracy and minority discrimination suggests that characteristics other than qualifications influence hiring decisions, little is known about whether this also pertains to the top positions in political-administrative organizations. To shed light on this question, we ask how candidate ethnicity, gender, and age affect the recruitment preferences among politicians regarding the candidates for top administrative positions. Our study uses a survey experiment with random assignment of 1,688 Flemish local politicians to one of eight different descriptions of applicants to the leading managerial position of their local authority. We find that ethnic minorities, women, and younger candidates are generally considered more qualified for the job. Moreover, the impact of ethnicity and gender on recruitment preferences is conditional on politicians' ideological predispositions: Left-wing politicians consider ethnic minority candidates more competent, whereas right-wing politicians consider them less representative and are less inclined to invite them for job interviews than candidates from the ethnic majority. Furthermore, politicians furthest to the left are more inclined than right-wing politicians to recognize women as representative of the public at large and support inviting them for job interviews.
2019
This dissertation examines how leaders explain the way shifts in leaders’ responsibilities, shifts in institutional pressures, and minority representation at the Senior Executive Service level influence how they integrate equity and diversity programs in federal agencies. When federal agencies address the issue of minority representation in Senior Executive Service (SES), the degree to which leaders institutionalize diversity and equity programs is inconsistent. This study seeks to contribute to neoinstitutional theory, equity and diversity literature, and representative bureaucracy by extending the perspective beyond institutional pressures on organizations. From a micro level view, this research introduces a three-tier-level of leadership and how they integrate practices differently. There have been shifts in responsibilities and pressures over time. Using semi-structured interviews, 18 leaders explain how these shifts influence them. This research, which also includes supporting ...
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2007
In the past, researchers in the field of public administration have been hindered in their ability to study trends in the representation of women and minorities in state government due to limitations in data availability. This article develops an alternative approach to examining the representation of women and minorities in state government bureaucracies over the period from 1987 to 2002. Based on estimates constructed using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey, our analysis shows that women are generally overrepresented in state government employment relative to their civilian labor force representation within a state, and African-Americans are overrepresented in many states. Latinos are typically underrepresented. We also examine the potential determinants of representation for women and minorities, and find, among other factors, private sector race and sex-based wage differentials, relative to those in the public sector, are positively associated with the representation of women, African-Americans, and Latinos in state government workforces.
Black or Blue: Racial Profiling and Representative Bureaucracy
2005
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Public Administration Review, 1997
This article applies the theory of representative bureaucracy to state-level political appointees. The theory holds that the demographic composition of the bureaucracy should mirror the demographic composition of the general public. In this way, the preferences of a heterogeneous population will be represented in bureaucratic decision making. New measures introduced in the article provide a more comprehensive picture of the extent to which demographic ^oups are truly represented in state government bureaucracies. In addition, the study offers a detailed breakdown of policy leaders by gender, race, and ethnicity. Our findings show that, in most cases, women and people of color are not well represented in top policy making positions in state governments across the country. We also find that in most cases, women and people of color have achieved even lower levels of representation than is evident from earlier studies, which jocus almost exclusively on the representation of these groups in career posts.