Where Did You Serve? Veteran Identity, Representative Bureaucracy, and Vocational Rehabilitation

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Abstract
The research on representative bureaucracy investigates whether higher levels of representation within public agencies affect policy outcomes. We expand this line of inquiry by examining the effect of symbolic representation on the clients’ perceptions of the vocational rehabilitation program administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs. We test the link between passive representation and symbolic representation for Veteran identity. This is one of the first studies to investigate an identity not associated with immutable characteristics. We question how an identity related to a profession that an individual selects into, like Veteran status, can influence a client’s relationship with a government program. We find that Veteran clients of the vocational rehabilitation system perceive substantial differences in the behaviors of their counselor and report significantly higher levels of overall satisfaction with the program when they know or believe their counselor is also a Veteran.

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