60 3: Th eories of Bureaucratic Politics
nature of bureaucracy be reconciled with the seemingly contradictory egalitar-
ian and ultimately ineffi cient values of democracy? Th e work of such scholars as
Waldo, Allison, Wilson, and Seidman strongly suggests that bureaucracies are
political policymaking institutions. Yet if bureaucracies are powerful policy ac-
tors engaged in “politics of the fi rst order,” they are also largely insulated from the
ballot box and only partially held accountable to elected offi cials (Meier 1993, 7;
Mosher 1982). Th is contradiction between bureaucracies making policy and basic
democratic values raises one of the most important challenges for public admin-
istration theory: “How does one square a permanent [and, we would add, power-
ful] civil service—which neither the people by their vote nor their representatives
by their appointments can readily replace—with the principle of government ‘by
the people’?” (Mosher 1982, 7). Any democratic theory of administration, Waldo
suggested, must be capable of answering this question.
Th e theory of representative bureaucracy focuses on fi nding a way to legitimate
the bureaucracy’s political power in the context of democratic values. Th e central
tenet of the theory is that a bureaucracy refl ecting the diversity of the community
it serves is more likely to respond to the interests of all groups in making policy de-
cisions (Krislov 1974; Selden 1997). If bureaucracies are sensitive to such a diver-
sity of interests, and these interests are represented in bureaucratic decisions and
behavior, the argument is that bureaucracy itself can be considered a representa-
tive institution. If bureaucracy is a representative institution, its long-recognized
political role can be accommodated with such basic democratic values as majority
rule, minority rights, and equal representation. Th is again refl ects the relation-
ship between politics and administration refl ected in fi gure 2.3d, which shows that
agencies are inherently legitimate policy actors and have an ethical responsibility
to act in the interests of citizens and protect the underrepresented.
Th e notion of legitimating bureaucratic power by treating bureaucracy as a
representative institution was formally introduced by J. Donald Kingsley in
Representative Bureaucracy (1944). Kingsley’s work, a study of the British public
service, advanced the argument that the civil service should refl ect the character-
istics of the ruling social class. To carry out its role eff ectively within the polity,
Kingsley argued, the civil service has to be sympathetic to the concerns and val-
ues of the dominant political group. Th ese shared values connect the exercise of
discretionary authority on the part of the bureaucrat to the will of the democratic
state. Although Kingsley coined the term “representative bureaucracy,” the basic
idea he articulates is quite old. In the United States, the spoils system instituted
during the nineteenth century resulted in a civil service that was dominated by
major party loyalists (Meier 1975). Such a bureaucracy can be viewed as an exten-
sion of the majority party, and therefore of the preferences expressed at the ballot
box. Such patronage systems, of course, also invite just the sort of problems that
prompted such scholars as Goodnow and Wilson to seek some division between
politics and administration: technical incompetence, favoritism in administrative
decisionmaking, and outright corruption.