Organizational Involvement and Representative Bureaucracy: Can We Have It Both Ways?

This article addresses an important issue of democratic theory and administration: the potential conflict between bureaucrats' allegiance to their agencies and to specific publics' interests. Representative bureaucracy, which emphasizes substantive interest representation in the administrative arena, embodies this potential for conflict. Empirical survey results which probe integration of substantive representation and employee allegiance among federal employees in four major agencies are presented. Evidence documents a different level of organizational involvement in an agency with a substantive representation mandate compared to employee involvement in agencies without a mandate for representation. While the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' mandate affords considerable potential for integrating substantive representation and employee allegiance, its employees do not rank highly in organizational involvement. Even more surprising, CCR minority employees are lowest in involvement. These findings imply an important hypothesis: effectiveness in achieving an agency mandate is crucial to successful integration of organizational involvement and substantive representation.