Should There Be A Representative Or Representative Bureaucracy?

Representative bureaucracy is the concept that a bureaucracy should mirror the society that is serves. This mirrored representation can be by ethnic, racial, gender, or socioeconomic groups. The fundamental belief behind this principle is that a person of a specific constituent group will be an advocate for that group and will ensure that that group is properly served by the government. This advocacy can be passive or active; proponents of a representative bureaucracy state that this advocacy need not be overt (Keiser, 2000) but the shared experience of that group would lead that person to be a positive advocate for that group, regardless if this is the bureaucrat’s intent or not.
Representative bureaucracy does, however, have critics.
The ability of a bureaucrat to be an advocate would imply that the bureaucrat has discretion and political accountability which would lead one to believe that the principle of a representative bureaucracy would be supported by Friedrich but would be refuted by Finer (1941); he believed that the bureaucracy should be politically neutral and have external controls; this would hinder the advocacy role of a bureaucrat. Friedrich (1940) on the other hand believed that the bureaucrat should be controlled by internal mechanisms and have greater discretion; this discretion would give the bureaucrat the ability to be an
Keiser, et al. (2000) notes that there are similarity between minority representation and gender representation; these similarities are the shared experiences and values that a member of a particular gender shares. Through these shared experiences and values the policy concerns of a historically underrepresented gender are addressed and promoted. The advocacy role of the bureaucrat is, however, stifled by the hierarchal structure and external controls exerted upon the bureaucracy. (Simon: 1997) This can limit the extent a bureaucrat can be an active advocate for their gender and illustrates how dissimilar agencies can have different levels of representative advocacy. Contrary to the premise of representative bureaucracy, Meier and Nigro (1976) and Mosher (1982) found that the attitudes of bureaucrats can be predicted more by the agency that they work for more than the specific demographic group. Therefore, the instructional structure has a great influence upon the degree of active advocacy a bureaucrat can exert. (Keiser, 2000: p. 8) This would lend one to believe that the intuition’s purpose goals have is a large factor in determining whether and to what extent they can become active