Governing the West Bank: What Role Do Elite Level Civil Servants Actively Represent?

Abstract

Representative bureaucracy is used to understand original data, shedding light on the administrative side of the politico-administrative axis in one part of one of the world’s most contentious and divisive conflicts: the Palestinian Israeli conflict. We theorize and test six different theoretically existent roles of elite level bureaucrat (ELB) role conceptions in the West Bank. Using Q Methodology in 22 ELB interviews, we identify two empirically existent bureaucrat role conceptions associated with serving the public: one traditional Wilsonian/Weberian; the other a coproducer of public policy. Bureaucrats serve the entire population, as in public service motivation, not a sub-section. They believe that politics and bureaucracy should be separate and share concerns that bureaucratic independence is in jeopardy. The discovery of these profiles suggests that both pro-social and active representations on behalf of primary identities are notably absent, suggesting further investigation is required into bureaucrat role conceptions in the fragile or developing society.