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Over the past four decades, nonwhites and women have made slow but important progress toward expanding their numbers in the higher reaches of state administration, although they are not yet proportionately represented in top-level policy-making positions in the American states. A question that prior research has not addressed is whether such passive representation-numerical employment in state bureaucracy-is linked to more active representation-expression of distinctive policy or program attitudes. Toward that end, this inquiry develops a model of representative bureaucracy and tests it empirically in a large sample of state agency directors. It examines the potential for active representation of nonwhites and women by senior state administrators, the heads of agencies across the fifty states. The model incorporates as a crucial variable the administrators' conceptions of their organizational work role; the role set is based on the values or goals senior state administrators hold for their agencies. The empirical analysis demonstrates that demographic variables such as race and gender can affect bureaucratic attitudes and behaviors indirectly through the mediating influence of the organizational role set. The findings also suggest that on certain issues and behaviors, race and gender can manifest direct effects. The article discusses the implications of these findings for theories of representative bureaucracy.

Previous research has concentrated on differences in gubernatorial power across states. Relatively little research attention has been devoted to the sources of gubernatorial influence over state agencies. Based on data collected from state administrators in 1978, this study examines the effects of four sets of factors on the perceived influence of the governor over the state administrative apparatus. These sets are: formal powers of the governor, characteristics of the agencies, characteristics of the positions held by administrators, and personal characteristics of these officials. Results show that these factors account for nearly one-fourth of the variance in the influence of the governor over state agencies, as reported by agency heads.

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Gubernatorial control over state agencies has become a topic of great concern as state governments have undergone reorganization and as financial and programmatic responsibilities have shifted from Washington to the states. Avenues and instruments of gubernatorial influence are identified from survey responses of state agency directors. The importance of each of these is then assessed using statistical analysis, with reported gubernatorial influence over the agency as the dependent variable. Analysis reveals that governors have access to important avenues of influence that will facilitate their control over state agencies.