Measuring Bureaucratic Representation and Integration

Abstract

The concept of has now occupied an important place in the literature of public administration and political science for some three decades. It has been used as an explanatory tool in discussions concerning political and economic development and the historical and/or contemporary development of national civil services, including those of the United States (Van Riper, 1958), Great Britain (Kingsley, 1944), India (Subramaniam, 1967), the U.S.S.R. (Fainsod, 1963), and ancient China (Menzel, 1963). The concept has also occupied an important place in studies concerning civil rights and equal employment opportunity (Krislov, 1967). Moreover, in recent years the creation of a representative bureaucracy has become a major objective of federal personnel policy (Rosenbloom, 1970; 1973). Despite its widespread useor perhaps because of it-however, the concept of is unclear at several points. The purpose of this article is to overcome some of this ambiguity by suggesting a new way of measuring integration (in the sense of socially, ethnically, and/or racially mixed) in bureaucracies and other forms of organizations. This measure complements existing techniques used to assess bureaucratic representativeness and makes it possible to deal with facets of the concept that previously defied empirical research. Foremost among the limitations found in the use of the concept of has been a tendency to fail to specify the exact sense in which the term is being used. Indeed, it was not until Mosher (1968) addressed the concept that a clear distinction between passive (variously called sociological or reflective) representation and active representation w s introduced. The former, ...concerns the source of origin of individuals and the degree to which, collectively, they mirror the total society, whereas the latter refers to the situation in which .. .an individual (or administrator) is expected to press for the interests and desires of those whom he is presumed to represent, whether they be the whole or some segment of the people (pp. 11-13). Most earlier discussions of not only had the defect of failing to make clear the sense in which bureaucracies were or were not representative, but also tended to assume that passive representation almost automatically and inevitably begets active representation. Such an assumption, however, as Mosher (1968) has pointed out, would seem to be highly unrealistic in the absence of empirical investigation. The link between passive and active representation, and a better understanding of what the latter entails, are, of course, crucial to expanding the utility of the concept of bureaucracy. Developing more sophisticated approaches concerning the more limited aspect of passive representation would nevertheless be useful at this