REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE BUREAUCRACY - EXAMINING THE TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UP LINKAGES

Objective. A common assumption in the literature has been that the ele ction of minority public officials results in an increase in minority employees in the bureaucracy (the top-down model). This research argue s that minority employees in the bureaucracy provide a political base that can be used to elect more minority politicians (the bottom-up mod el). Methods. A pooled time series analysis of all 67 Florida school d istricts is used to test the interrelationships between black school b oard members, black school administrators, and black teachers. Results . The relationship between political representation and bureaucratic r epresentation is reciprocal. Increases in black school board members r esult in additional black administrators, which in turn result in more black teachers. Similarly, increases in black teachers result in more black administrators, which in turn increase black representation on the school board. Conclusions. Past research has relied exclusively on the top-down model of representation, but this study shows the model to be incomplete. Representation also flows from the bureaucracy to el ected officials. This suggests the policy benefits of a representative bureaucracy may be greater than previous research implies.