Eskimo Housing Programmes, 1954-65: A Case Study Of Representative Bureaucracy

• Main Author: Nixon, Patrick Gerald
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Scholarship@Western 1984
• Subjects: Political Science; Public Administration; Canada; eskimo*
• Online Access: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/1318; https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/context/digitizedtheses/article/2317/viewcontent/NK60080.PDF

The concept of representative bureaucracy is used in this study to understand the reasons for the development of Eskimo housing programmes in Canada between 1954 and 1965 and to evaluate their effectiveness.;The study argues that, in the absence of the Canadian federal public service's taking an advocacy/representative position vis a vis Canada's Eskimo peoples, the historic government policy of doing little for northerners would likely have continued. Nevertheless, because public servants for various reasons failed to involve Eskimo people in the decision making which affected their lives, the legitimacy of a representative bureaucracy was challenged within the public service and ultimately by the Eskimo peoples themselves. As a result of these challenges, representative bureaucracy failed in "delivering the policy goods" to northern natives and in gaining their acceptance and the acceptance of Canadian society in general for this type of bureaucratic mandate.