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AbstractNumerous institutions, such as the police, public schools, legislatures, and the courts face criticism for a lack of diversity and representation. According to various political theorists, the lack of representation of marginalized groups in public institutions worsens citizen attitudes. In response, some advocate for increasing passive representation within public institutions. However, different schools of thought exist about whether increasing representation of minorities is a zero‐sum game and worsens attitudes of historical majorities. We generate and test two hypotheses from these competing perspectives. We employ data from a national survey of students' attitudes toward the fairness of school discipline using measures that match the different mechanisms found in theory. We find evidence that passive representation for African Americans predicts perceptions of fairness and corresponds to improved, rather than worsened, attitudes for whites. This supports the arguments of Mosher, and others, that increasing the representation of groups enhances legitimacy among the polity as a whole and is not zero‐sum.

This article explores the impact of the race of individual clients and of the local racial context on the implementation of sanctions for recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in a Midwestern state. We find that although nonwhites are sanctioned at lower rates than whites overall, nonwhites are sanctioned more compared to whites in each local area. This paradox occurs because nonwhites tend to live in areas with lower sanction rates. Consistent with the literature on race and policy, we find that sanction rates increase as the nonwhite population increases until a threshold is reached where nonwhites gain political power.

This paper explores the impact of the race of individual clients and of the local racial context on the implementation of sanctions for recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in a Midwestern state. We find that although nonwhites are sanctioned at lower rates than whites overall, nonwhites are sanctioned more compared to whites in each local area. This paradox occurs because nonwhites tend to live in areas with lower sanction rates. Consistent with the literature on race and policy, we find that sanction rates increase as the nonwhite population increases until a threshold is reached where nonwhites gain political power.

According to the theory of representative bureaucracy, passive representation among public employees will lead to active representation in bureaucratic outputs. Existing research demonstrates that the link between passive and active representation exists for race but not for sex. Past research on this topic has not, however, taken into account the contextual environment that affects whether sex will translate into gender and lead to active representation in the bureaucracy. In this paper, we create a framework that specifies the conditions that affect whether passive representation results in active representation for sex and then test this framework using the case of education. We find that passive representation of women in education leads to active representation and that the institutional context affects the extent to which this link between passive and active representation occurs.