Recategorization: An Approach to Extending the Symbolic Benefits of Bureaucratic Representation to the Majority Group

• Published date: 01 February 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740231200446
• Author: Inkyu Kang,Cheon Lee
• Date: 01 February 2024

Recategorization: An Approach

to Extending the Symbolic Benef‌its

of Bureaucratic Representation

to the Majority Group

Inkyu Kang

1,*

and Cheon Lee

2,*

Abstract

Research has argued that the symbolic benef‌its of bureaucratic representation for marginalized social groups may come at the

expense of the attitudes of the majority group. In this study, we investigate whether recategorization—that is, reframing

previously separate groups as an inclusive common ingroup—can shift the majority group’s perception of bureaucratic

representation from a threat to a benef‌it. We conducted two vignette experiments with a representative sample of U.S. adults

(n=1,040), in which we tested the same treatments in two policy domains: policing and healthcare. Theresults support our

main hypothesis in the policing context. The effect of police chiefs’race being African American on white respondents’trust in

the chief shifted from negative to positive when the chiefs portrayed African Americans discriminated by the police as

members of American community, a superordinate common ingroup that encompasses every race, rather than simply as

African Americans.

Keywords

trade-off of symbolic representation, recategorization, intergroup conf‌lict, racial equity, vignette experiment

Introduction

Social equity is a “third pillar”of public administration which

is jeopardized by unjustif‌ied imbalance in the quality of public

service across different social groups (Frederickson, 1990;

Gooden & Portillo, 2011; Hart, 1974). For the past several

decades, gender equity and racial equity have been pressing

social issues in the United States. There has been some mean-

ingful progress on these issues, yet certain gaps still remain to

be closed. President Biden’s Executive Order 13985 in 2021

reaff‌irmed social equity as a central pillar of American democ-

racy, while also implying that there is still much work to be

done: “the Federal Government should pursue a comprehen-

sive approach to advancing equity for all, including people

of color and others who have been historically underserved,

marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty

and inequality”(The White House, 2021).

Not surprisingly, there are large disparities in attitudes

toward government between the majority group and histori-

cally marginalized group across a range of policy

areas (Kang, 2022). In the case of policing, for instance,

African Americans have low conf‌idence in police compared

with relatively positive attitudes among whites. According to

multiyear polling by Gallup, the gap between conf‌idence in

police among whites and African Americans was around

25% during the 1990s and kept growing until it reached its

peak at 37% in 2020. These racial disparities in the attitudes

toward government may turn into a vicious cycle that makes

improving social equity more challenging. Negative attitudes

among the underprivileged discourage their compliance,

cooperation, and coproduction with government, which in

turn negatively impacts the quality of goods and services

that they receive from the government, further damaging

their attitudes toward government down the road.

Studies on representative bureaucracy have shown that

passive representation—that is, descriptive representation

of marginalized social groups in public bureaucracy—may

enhance the attitudes of the represented groups in a symbolic

1

Department of Public Administration and Policy, University of Georgia,

Athens, GA, USA

2

Department of Government, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces,

NM, USA

*Author order is alphabetical.

Corresponding Author:

Inkyu Kang, Department of Public Administration and Policy, University

of Georgia, 355 S Jackson St, Athens, GA 30606, USA.

Email: inkyu.kang@uga.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2024, Vol. 54(2) 163–179

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/02750740231200446

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way, even without substantive changes in bureaucratic efforts

(Meier & Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Riccucci & Van Ryzin,

2017; Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009). A dilemma of sym-

bolic representation that remains problematic, however, is

that it may compromise the attitudes of the majority group

in exchange. For instance, Theobald and Haider-Markel

(2009) suggest that having more minority off‌icers in police

forces may have an adverse impact on the attitudes of nonmi-

norities. In a similar vein, Riccucci et al. (2018, p. 515) argue

that “a more diverse police force …is likely to suffer a loss of

support and legitimacy among whites as compared with black

citizens in the United States.”In the presence of such a trade-

off, it becomes unclear whether symbolic representation

would benef‌it society as a whole, rather than selectively ben-

ef‌iting a specif‌ic group.

To address this important yet underexplored problem, we

draw from the literature on the common ingroup identity

model and examine the role of recategorization as an

approach to mitigate intergroup conf‌licts.Recategorization

refers to “a set of cognitive processes that are theorized to

underpin prejudice reduction, in which ingroup and outgroup

members recategorize themselves as an inclusive superordi-

nate group in order to achieve harmonious relations”

(White & Abu-Rayya, 2012, p. 599). It changes the inter-

group context so that previously separated groups are tied

together within a common superordinate group and encour-

aged to see each other as less of a competitor or a threat,

which remedies intergroup conf‌licts. Recategorization can

be a particularly useful strategy for public leaders who

engage with broader audiences and navigate the web of

symbols as representative messengers of government

(Bustos, 2021; Selznick, 1957).

For an empirical test, two vignette experiments were per-

formed with a representative sample of U.S. adults in terms of

age, gender, race/ethnicity, and region (n=1,040). The

experiments tested the same treatments in different but com-

parable policy contexts: policing and healthcare. Policing is

the domain where prior studies have extensively discussed

the trade-off of symbolic representation, while healthcare

provides a good reference point to explore contextual contin-

gency. The experimental vignettes postulated a scenario in

which leaders of police departments or public hospitals

promise an organizational reform after an African

American civilian is inadequately treated by a white off‌icer

or a white doctor. We found a crossover interaction effect

in policing context that provides important support for our

hypothesis. African American police chiefs were more

likely to be perceived as trustworthy than white chiefs

among whites as well as the general public, when the

African American victim was portrayed as a member of

“our American community”as a broader inclusive ingroup.

When the victims were described simply as an African

American, by contrast, we found the opposite; African

American chiefs were less likely than white chiefs to be seen

as trustworthy among whites as well as the general public.

Our f‌indings suggest that using inclusive language that

weakens tensions between privileged and underprivileged

social groups helps in extending the symbolic benef‌its of

bureaucratic representation to the majoritygroup.

Symbolic Representation

and its Trade-Off

Representative bureaucracy, an equity-oriented theory in

public administration, argues that a demographically rep-

resentative government is more apt to serve the public in

an equitable manner (Dolan & Rosenbloom, 2016;

Meier & Nigro, 1976; Mosher, 1968; Riccucci & Van

Ryzin, 2017; Selden, 1997; Subramaniam, 1967).

Numerous studies have explored various aspects of the

translation of passive representation (i.e., descriptive

demographic representation of marginalized social

groups in government) into active representation (i.e.,

substantive bureaucratic efforts that fulf‌ill the needs and

demands of marginalized social groups in the broader

society) (e.g., see Meier, 2019). Symbolic representation,

on the other hand, is a more recent strand of research. It

refers to a mechanism through which passive representa-

tion improves the attitudes of the underrepresented

groups in a symbolic way, even in the absence of substan-

tive changes in bureaucratic efforts (Clayton et al., 2019;

Meier & Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Riccucci et al., 2014;

Riccucci & Van Ryzin, 2017; Schuck et al., 2021;

Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009).

A major dilemma of symbolic representation that has been

consistently f‌lagged is that its benef‌it may come at the

expense of the attitudes of the majority group. The concerns

for this “trade-off”of symbolic representation have been

brought up most frequently in the context of policing. For

example, Theobald and Haider-Markel (2009) show that

having more minority off‌icers in the police workforce may

negatively affect the attitudes of nonminority citizens. In a

similar vein, Riccucci et al. (2018, p. 515) contend that “a

more diverse police force …is likely to suffer a loss of

support and legitimacy among whites as compared with

black citizens in the United States.”Riccucci et al. (2018)

also report similar evidence that while increasing black rep-

resentation in police agencies improves African Americans’

judgment of police performance and trust in police, it has a

signif‌icant negative effect on whites’judgment of police per-

formance and trust in police: “Our f‌indings …can be inter-

preted to suggest that a more diverse police force,

regardless of good or poor performance in terms of civilian

complaints, is likely to suffer a loss of support and legitimacy

among whites as compared with black citizens in the United

States”(p. 515). While reasonable arguments have been

made about the trade-off of symbolic representation, less is

known about the underlying psychological mechanisms that

cause the trade-offs.

164 American Review of Public Administration 54(2)