Representative Bureaucracy in Plural Societies

Abstract

This chapter identifies the absence of scholarly interest in determining the role of the bureaucrat in sustaining conflict management mechanisms. It finds that conflict management research has much to learn from public administration research within uncontested societies. It is not sufficient to understand what policies to implement, nor is it sufficient to understand the structures that are conducive to good governance: scholarship must also extend to understanding how elite level bureaucrats influence/skew policies and decision-making processes. What follows is a review of existing empirical research useful for understanding the role of the bureaucracy in conflict management. It is expected that this chapter will inform the reader on the nature of existing bureaucratic governance research within contested environments, shedding light on potential avenues of further research and current problems facing professional administrators in ethnically and culturally divided societies. Incorporating both conflict management research and public administration research, the need for a greater understanding of how bureaucratic mechanisms are exploited by the bureaucrat becomes more apparent.