Linking political and bureaucratic representation: Does minority representation on city councils affect the outcomes of street‐level service?
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | Heasun Choi,Sounman Hong |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12696 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Linking political and bureaucratic representation:
Does minority representation on city councils
affect the outcomes of street-level service?
Heasun Choi
1
| Sounman Hong
2
1
Department of Public Administration and
Policy, SUNY (State University of New York at
Albany), New York, USA
2
Department of Public Administration, Yonsei
University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Correspondence
Sounman Hong, Department of Public
Administration, Seodaemungu Shinchondong,
Yonsei-ro 50 Yonhee Hall 113-3, Yonsei
University, Seoul 120749, Republic of Korea.
Email: phdsmhong@gmail.com
Funding information
This work was supported by the Ministry of
Education of the Republic of Korea and the
National Research Foundation of Korea,
Grant/Award Number:
NRF-2018S1A5A2A03030694
Abstract
This study examines whether minority representation in
democratic institutions impacts frontline public service out-
comes, investigating specifically the association between
the shares of ethnic minorities on California city councils
and the measured level of racial disparities practised by the
police in the corresponding jurisdictional areas. The findings
suggest that an increase in ethnic minority council members
is associated with a respective decrease in racial disparities
against ethnic minority groups only if ethnic minority
groups are well represented in police forces. This study is
among the first to empirically examine the link between
political representation and bureaucratic behaviours at the
street level. The findings have implications for understand-
ing how political representation can contribute to the dem-
ocratic accountability of street-level bureaucracy and how
political and bureaucratic representations can complement
each other.
1|INTRODUCTION
Scholars of representative bureaucracy have explored the influence of minority representation within the
bureaucracy on the promotion of public values, including social equity, democracy and efficiency (Nicholson-Crotty
et al. 2011; Atkins and Wilkins 2013; Gade and Wilkins 2013; Kennedy 2014; Andrews et al. 2015; Meier and Mor-
ton 2015; Riccucci et al. 2016; Hong 2017a, 2017b). While some have explored the conditions under which minority
representation is associated with evidence of policies that benefit minorities, others have examined issues that
include who is represented, what values are being represented, and why minority bureaucrats decide to represent
their communities. Given the growing focus on racial inequality in society, the recent growth of scholarly research
on the theory of representative bureaucracy and its empirical investigations is not surprising.
Received: 2 December 2019 Revised: 6 August 2020 Accepted: 14 August 2020
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12696
Public Admin. 2021;99:405–421. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 405
Previous literature has largely treated political and administrative representation as separate research agendas.
Political science research has focused on whether racial or gender representation among elected politicians affects
the preferences of a democratic institution, whereas public administration scholars have explored whether represen-
tation among street-level officers affects policy implementation. Due to this dichotomization of political and adminis-
trative representation, past research has neglected the need to explore the influence of representation among
elected officials on the behaviours of street-level bureaucrats (Stensöta 2012). Since decision-making political bodies
and street-level bureaucrats are related in their roles of reflecting and fulfilling the policy needs of citizens, this is a
glaring gap in the literature (Kelly 1998). As top policy-makers, minority politicians may affect the interests of minor-
ity groups by shaping the behaviours of frontline officers.
This study focuses on US municipal governments and explores whether and to what extent elected minority offi-
cials in democratic governing bodies influence the attitudes and behaviour of street-level bureaucrats. The evidence
for this study is drawn from California, where the city councils exert indirect but significant influence over street-
level public service operations. These councils must have members who are elected ‘at-large’during general munici-
pal elections. California state law treats the mayor as a city council member; the mayor does not possess any powers
above or beyond those of other members (Beach and Jones 2017). In these ‘council-manager’cities, the city council
has the authority to determine key city policies. With regard to the police service, in most cities the city council
appoints members of the Police Commission, who oversee police operations and define its policies. Furthermore, the
city council approves the expenditure level on the police service and can punish the police chief for misconduct.
Despite these institutional structures, however, there is a lack of evidence concerning whether the racial or ethnic
composition of a democratic governing body influences local public service.
This research examines whether minority representation on city councils influences the behaviour of street-level
bureaucrats while working within their jurisdictions, as predicted by the theory of representative bureaucracy. Spe-
cifically, the following questions are asked: Does passive representation on a city council lead to active representa-
tion at the street level? How is the impact of representation on a city council affected by the level of representation
in the police force? In particular, does the impact of representation on a city council increase with greater represen-
tation among police officers? To answer these questions, data on the racial composition of California city councils
and police officers are combined with data on the incidence of minority citizens being searched by the police in
corresponding jurisdictions. This research examined whether minority representation on city councils and police
forces has any association with the incidence of minority citizens being searched. Specifically, this study measured
the difference between whites and ethnic minority citizen groups (i.e., black, Latinx, and Asian) in terms of search
rates. We then investigated whether this measured level of ‘racial disparities’against minority-group citizens is lower
in cities in which minority groups are represented on the city council and how the impact is moderated by minority
representation in the police force. The findings suggest that passive representation on city councils translates into
active representation, particularly in cities in which minorities are well represented in the police force and the minor-
ity ethnic group occupies a large share of the city population.
The next section provides a brief overview of the past literature on representative bureaucracy. This is followed
by details of the hypotheses tested in this article. The fourth section describes the empirical approach and the data
that were analysed. Finally, we present the results of the investigation and the conclusion.
2|THEORIES OF REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
Prior research in public administration suggests that representative bureaucracy improves the responsiveness of
public officials to the needs of citizens, especially for vulnerable social groups (Selden 1997). Scholars have pointed
out that excessive reliance on professionalism leads to the instrumental functioning of bureaucracy, resulting in a dis-
regard for public values, including social equity and democracy (e.g., Kingsley 1944). These scholars suggest that rep-
resentative bureaucracy overcomes the inherent limits of bureaucracy by ensuring the opportunity for minorities
406 CHOI AND HONG
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