Cultural Professionalism : Links of implementation and information between public administration and minority groups. A description and an evaluation of its trade-offs

Sammanfattning: With increased immigration into western democracies, how to establish generalised trust in society has received new attention. Are minorities and immigrants low trust levels best remediated through Putnam’s theory of civil organisation engagement or Rothstein’s theory of impartial institutions? Simultaneously, people are hired based on their cultural identity to work with minorities and immigrants in Swedish public administration, which is thought to increase the target group’s trust. This resembles the ideas of representative bureaucracy and conflicts with traditional merit recruitment and Rothstein’s theory. This thesis uses an inductive ideal type method based on an assumption of thin rationality to study the phenomena of hiring based on cultural identity, which it names cultural professionalism. It askes firstly, what does cultural professionalism contribute with that makes it desirable for actors in public administration and how is this related to trust? Secondly, what are the trade-offs when using cultural professionalism in public administration? Through studying the rational of the phenomena for actors directly affected by it, the findings indicate that cultural professionalism is a way to communicate information and legitimise implementation towards minority groups. The cultural professionals use their trustworthiness within the group to link implementation and information from public administration towards the group, and information from the group towards public administration. This information also has a socialising potential. The trust is however particularised, i.e. not bridged to public administration. Problematic logics discovered in the material are evaluated towards the three values of public administration: democracy, rule of law and efficiency. In sum, cultural professionals imply trade-offs for democracy and rule of law, and appears to favour efficiency. Lastly, cultural professionalism is described and defined as a “new” ideal type legitimacy model in policy implementation.