The debate over how "representative" the bureaucracy is has now gone on for some years, with recent analyses stressing the importance of "active" as opposed to "passive" representation. Passive or demographic representation, however, continues to be an important object of attention because of its functional as well as symbolic roles. This note focuses on an unexplored aspect of administrative representation — the representativeness of state bureaucracies. On the whole, the five state bureaucracies examined are representative of the population within each state, although the upper-levels of each bureaucracy, as at the federal level, are highly unrepresentative.
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