Gender Equality in Public Services: Chasing the Dream by Hazel Conley and Margaret Page, and: Democracy and the Public Service (Public Administration and Democracy), 2nd ed. by Frederick C. Mosher (review)

Can bureaucracy and democracy coexist? Bureaucracy functions rationally under restraints that reflect democratic values; therefore, the two can possibly coexist. However, because government workers can maintain their rights by forming labor unions like those in the private sector, there needs to be in-depth discussion of this in relation to democracy. Mosher finds collective actions such as government workers forming labor unions to be harmful to the impartiality that bureaucrats need to possess. Further, they hinder the merit system and ultimately obstruct democracy. Mosher categorized the notion of representativeness that bureaucrats possess in two ways. One is active representativeness, and the other is passive representativeness (14). The former is a characteristic of bureaucrats who try to represent their demographic origins. Because such bureaucrats advocate the political interests of those who share their origins, it would bring severe harm to democratic representativeness. On the other hand, the latter defines the formal representativeness of bureaucrats. In other words, officials do not need to actively pursue benefits for their respective groups. Mosher finds that bureaucrats need to maintain impartiality through passive representativeness in order to coexist with democratic principles.

On one hand, there exists the problem of expanding the breadth of work experiences because a majority of government workers work at the same organization over long periods (20, 238). In other words, because the breadth of job experiences is relatively narrow, there are limitations in building one's career. To relieve such problems that government workers face, Mosher stresses workers' democratic participation similar to that of the private sector. When government workers start to democratically participate in decision-making processes, the organization can establish high-quality decisions and increase effectiveness and efficiency. In addition, democratic principles and ideals become reflected in the organization's values (22). However, because it is necessary to prevent government workers from abusing their rights and power, there need to be restrictions of rights in certain aspects. Government workers should be restricted from participating in political activities and should also not participate in collective labor activities such as strikes and boycotts (24).

One of the reasons Mosher was on the watch for government workers' collective activities was because specialization of bureaucracy increased. As democracy expanded, everyone equally had the opportunity to receive higher education, which in turn had government agencies demanding more professionalism, and resulted in an influx of government workers with specialized skill sets in certain areas (142). In addition, career management of government workers brought forth a more specialized and standardized bureaucratic operation system, which increased the professionalism of bureaucracy (153). However, Mosher saw government workers collectively organizing labor unions as acts of trying to maintain and expand their vested rights and expertise, which he found harmful to the bureaucratic merit system (215). Also, it can be inferred that such collective activities of government workers would impede the coexistence of a bureaucratic structure and democratic system. In other words, Mosher demands impartiality of bureaucrats through passive representativeness; however, when government workers collectively organize through labor unions, they contrarily perform active representativeness by aggressively pursuing benefits for the collective they belong to. According to Mosher's argument, such active representativeness is a hindrance to democracy.

In his writing, Mosher presents the following commentary on the bureaucratic system of a contemporary society within a democratic nation. First, it is necessary to examine the legitimacy of whether a labor union of government workers can form. According to Article 151, Section 7, of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Agreement, employee representatives in the public sector are encouraged to develop and utilize methods for participating in decision-making processes of their working conditions. Also, when needed, the statute provides that adequate measures in accordance with domestic circumstances be taken to facilitate...