Measuring bureaucratic representation and integration

The concept of representative bureaucracy 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 use-or perhaps because of it-however, the concept of representative bureaucracy 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.