Representative Bureaucracy

"Professor Samuel Krislov’s Representative Bureaucracy remains among the most important and enduring books in the field of public administration and its intersection with political science. It takes the kernel of the idea, inchoately introduced in J. Donald Kingsley’s 1944 book by the same title, that public bureaucracies can be representative political institutions and it develops an overall analytic framework with empirically testable propositions that has served subsequent generations scholars very well. So well, in fact, that as the literature on representative bureaucracy blossomed, these propositions have become so ingrained that many younger scholars are unaware of their initial formulation and roots. That is one reason why the republication of this volume now is not only appropriate, but a critical step toward more tightly organizing the vast literature that it arguably spawned into a comprehensive empirically-based theory integrating all facets of the study of representative bureaucracy.... Krislov entered into this contentiousness [over affirmative action and agency socialization] with unusual balance, sophistication, and nuance—and substantial success in advancing our thinking about how public bureaucracies can and cannot be representative."
— David H. Rosenbloom
Distinguished Professor of Public Administration,
American University, Washington D.C. (from the new Foreword)

"Whatever Sam Krislov has written has been well ahead of the curve. This important book was pathbreaking when it was first published and remains an important statement on a timely issue. With this republication, it will now be available to a new generation of scholars."
— Malcolm M. Feeley
Claire Sanders Clements Dean's Professor,
Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, Law School,
University of California at Berkeley

Part of the new Classics of the Social Sciences Series from Quid Pro Books, this modern republication of a foundational book in public administration and political science is presented with updated formatting, larger font, and embedded page numbers from the original edition—for continuity of referencing and ready classroom assignment.