Representative Bureaucracy and Policy Preferences: A Study in the Attitudes of Federal Executives
Representative Bureaucracy and Policy Preferences: A Study in the Attitudes of Federal Executives
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代表性官僚机构和政策偏好：联邦行政人员态度研究
DOI：
10.2307/974854
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发表时间：
1976
影响因子：
8.3
通讯作者：
Lloyd G. Nigro
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
K. Meier;Lloyd G. Nigro
公共行政人员被认为是在相互竞争的政治力量之间分配资源的关键行为者。正如阿普尔比经常观察到的那样，行政决策是政治决策，控制行政权力是民主政体中的一个关键问题。在所建议的许多控制策略中，有一种是代表性官僚机构（6）（24）（26）（28）（30）（31）（33）（34）（37）（47）（48）（49）。代议制官僚制概念的基本公理/命题是：如果管理者的态度与公众的态度相似，管理者所做的决定通常会对公众的愿望做出反应。“代议官僚制”的倡导者强调外部政治控制对行政行为的明显弱点，并认为内部行为控制是保持公共官僚制对人民负责的必要条件。内部控制的基本要素是行政人员和广大公众之间的态度一致，以促进作出反应迅速的决定和政策。许多决策理论家认为，如果两个人理性地寻求在相同条件下使用相同信息最大化给定的一组价值（态度），他们将得出相同的决定（12）（19）（42）（46）。因此，如果公务员的态度与市民一致，他们的行为便应在市民的接受范围内。当然，这并不意味着行政决定和公众舆论总是一致的，因为行政人员可以获得大多数公民无法获得的信息和专门知识。因此，代议制官僚制的理论从回应性的定义开始：如果管理者和公众有共同的价值取向，那么管理者将倡导和追求公众在能够聚集并拥有管理者的专业知识和信息的情况下会采取的行动。
Public administrators are considered key actors in allocating resources among competing political forces. Administrative decisions, as Appleby so often observed, are political decisions, and controlling administrative power is a critical issue in a democratic polity (2). Among the many strategies of control suggested is representative bureaucracy (6) (24) (26) (28) (30) (31) (33) (34) (37) (47) (48) (49). The fundamental axiom/proposition underlying the concept of representative bureaucracy is: if the attitudes of administrators are similar to the attitudes held by the general public, the decisions administrators make will in general be responsive to the desires of the public. Advocates of a "representative bureaucracy" emphasize the apparent weaknesses of external political controls on administrative action and argue that internal controls on behavior are necessary to keep public bureaucracy responsive to the people. The basic element of internal control is a congruence of attitudes between administrators and the public at large that promotes responsive decisions and policies. Implicit in the attitude congruence argument is the premise of many decision theorists that if two people rationally seek to maximize a given set of values (attitudes) under identical conditions with the same information, they will arrive at the same decision (12) (19) (42) (46). Therefore, if civil servants hold attitudes identical to the public's, their actions should be within the public's zone of acceptance. This, of course, does not mean that administrative decisions and public opinion will always coincide, because administrators have access to information and expertise not available to the bulk of the citizenry. The theory of representative bureaucracy, thus, begins with the following definition of responsiveness: If administrators and the public share value orientations, then the administrators will advocate and pursue courses of action the public would if it were able to congregate and had the administrators' expertise and information.