64 3: Th eories of Bureaucratic Politics
representing that group. Nick Th eobald and Donald Haider-Markel (2009), by
examining citizen attitudes about actions by police offi cers, show that actions
by bureaucrats are more likely to be perceived as legitimate if citizens and bu-
reaucrats share demographic characteristics. If this holds across agencies, it sug-
gests that citizen attitudes about bureaucrats and policy implementation can be
changed without actions on the part of bureaucrats that are expressly designed
to represent certain groups (active representation). Furthermore, they argue that
methods used by those studying representative bureaucracy have relied on ag-
gregate data, which makes it diffi cult to know if their fi ndings demonstrate active
or symbolic representation. Considering the implications for democratic gover-
nance, it is important to clarify this question.
Th e key to representative bureaucracy’s attempt to build a bridge between
orthodox public administration theory and democratic theory thus still rests to
no small extent on the ability of future empirical studies to support the theo-
ry’s central hypothesis that passive representation will lead to active representa-
tion. Although the literature has expanded greatly since 2000, the issues raised by
Th eobald and Haider-Markel imply the more individual-level empirical work is
needed.
Conclusions
It is probably fair to say that public administration scholarship has been more
successful in demonstrating the need for theories of bureaucratic politics than in
actually producing those frameworks. It has been more than half a century since
such scholars as Waldo and Gaus exposed the rickety foundations of the politics-
administration dichotomy and made a convincing brief that administrative theory
had to share common ground with political theory. Since then, numerous studies
have empirically confi rmed the political role of the bureaucracy. Some of these,
including those of Wilson and Seidman, center on a series of empirically testable
propositions. Even if the works themselves are explicitly discursive, they contain
the basic materials for constructing theory. To date, however, that construction
project remains incomplete.
Does the relative lack of success in producing widely applicable bureaucratic
politics frameworks mean the eff ort to do so should be reassessed? Th e progeni-
tors of the bureaucratic politics movement would surely answer no, for the simple
reason that the most important characteristic of public administration is its po-
litical nature, and we ignore this at our peril. Long once wrote that “there is no
more forlorn spectacle in the administrative world than an agency and a program
possessed of statutory life, armed with executive orders, sustained in the courts,
yet stricken with paralysis and deprived of power. An object of contempt to its
enemies and of despair to its friends” (1949, 257).
Long’s point was that the ability of a public agency to get things done was not
dependent upon the responsibilities and authority granted to it by statute. Th e