Representative Bureaucracy, Distributional Equity, and Environmental Justice

Abstract

This article explores the role of bureaucratic representation and distributional equity in the implementation of environmental policy, which has been shaped by the politics of identity, administrative discretion, and a contested discourse on the redistribution of public resources. We examine whether minority bureaucratic representation fosters policy outputs for race-related disadvantaged communities, and whether the behavior of public administrators reflects distributional equity. Linking representative bureaucracy to environmental justice, this research contributes to the understanding of social equity in public administration and sheds light on the relationship between bureaucratic representation and democratic values. Analyzing a nationwide, block-group-level dataset, we find that a more racially representative workforce in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promotes the agency’s enforcement actions in communities that have large local-national disparity in minority population and severe policy problem. But the size of bureaucratic representation effect is larger for neighborhoods that are overburdened with race-related social vulnerability.