The Politics of Representative Bureaucracy in Multilingual States: A Comparison of Belgium, Canada and Switzerland

Abstract

The role of the public service in managing territorial diversity has too often been overlooked in the literature on multilingual states. In the article, we explore the issue of bureaucratic representation of the federal public administration of Belgium, Canada and Switzerland, three economically advanced federal states in which language has become over time the dominant cultural marker and dividing line. We argue that variations observed in mechanisms of bureaucratic representation can be explained by differences in the configuration of two variables: discourse about the contours of the political community and how it has been channelled through the policy-making process of each country.