ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on insights from scholarship on representative bureaucracy in order to highlight how public administrators can make community development efforts more democratic and sustainable in ways that are consistent with the New Public Service (NPS) perspective. Along these lines, it discusses the normative foundations of representative bureaucracy, its fundamental theoretical concepts, empirical findings on the factors that lead public administrators to assume a representative role, and the influence that representation has on policy outcomes. Research demonstrates that this influence may result in positive policy outcomes for citizens with whom they share those characteristics. This occurs through two separate channels: active representation and symbolic representation. Active representation establishes a channel through which the social origins of public administrators leads them to take actions that produce beneficial policy outcomes. Symbolic representation, on the other hand, establishes a channel through which the social origins of public administrators generate a sense of trust and perceptions of legitimacy on the part of citizens. This increases the likelihood that citizens will be willing to cooperate and work with public officials, thereby producing beneficial policy outcomes through the coproduction of service.
