Does a Representative Bureaucracy Have No Meaning?
A common priority for a public service is for it to not just carry out its administrative and regulatory tasks as set by the elected government, but also to look like the population it serves. This is representative bureaucracy.
A dominant political science textbook tries to define ‘representative bureaucracy as,
…the public service be a microcosm of the total society in terms of a wide range of variables, including race, religion, language, education, social class and region of origin (Kernaghan and Siegel, Public Administration in Canada, 1999).
Somehow, government departments that resemble the diversity of the people would be more responsive to their needs and concerns.
Government communications thus strive to also look representative. The following Canadian images show this:
- A Quebec government report has a family, an Asian couple, a nurse (or female doctor), and even a tree hugger!
A BC government financial report covers a spectrum of people of different ethnicities and even disabilities.
A welcome page to the government of Ontario has an Asian Dad or Grandfather, and also, possibly, a single mom (note a swoosh conceals whether she sports a wedding band on her finger)
A family that has possibly adopted a child of different ethnicity, and senior citizens.
The Green Party has a little child imploring us to vote, when she can't herself. This can't be "real democracy" by law in Canada, but appeals to the tween crowd?
The nervous hypothesis is this: With governments taking so much pains to be uber-representative, does it ultimately seem meaningless? If every time a government advertisement is released, all the colours of the rainbow are flying, does such diversity really bring blandness?
Representative democracy is to look like the population, but does it go too far, in the same manner that for a few decades, every judge on an American television show was African American? Yet, this was far beyond the actual proportion of blacks in such legal robes, in reality.
The hypocrisy remains in another way. That is, when such communications are not representative, governments may still be fingered for blame:
Whoops? Cute kids but they are all Caucasian.
Insufficient diversity?
