The Promise of Representative Bureaucracy: Diversity and Responsiveness in a Government Agency: Diversity and Responsiveness in a Government Agency

This prize-winning study examines the impact of the employment of women and ethnic and racial minorities in public organizations on the implementation of government programs by those agencies. Driving the study is the question of whether the concept of "representative government" applies also to the "permanent government" -- the bureaucracy. This study, which won the Leonard D. White award, is the most systematic test to date of the concept of representative bureaucracy. Selden tests the relationship between the demographic representativeness of district office staffs and lending decisions in the Farmers Home Administration's Rural Housing Loans Program. In fleshing out the implications of representative bureaucracy, the book makes an important contribution to the debates on bureaucratic power and illuminates the tensions underlying the assumptions of bureaucratic neutrality and affirmative action.