Deservingness, humanness, and representation through lived experience: analyzing first responders’ attitudes

Representative bureaucracy theory has mainly been used to understand how identities related to race, ethnicity, and gender influence how bureaucrats administer public services. Although representation through lived experience has expanded the scope of the theory, this theoretical thread has mostly focused on the perspectives of management. The purpose of this article is to employ lived experience representative bureaucracy theory to understand the influence of first responders’ experiences with substance use disorder (drug addiction) on their viewpoints regarding the humanness and deservingness of clients with opioid use disorder. We analyze data from a survey of emergency medical services (EMS)-providers and police officers in the United States (N = 3,500) with ordinary least squares regression and Hayes’ PROCESS macro to test for mediation. Results show that indirect and direct lived experiences—respectively, having a family member or friend who has experienced addiction and believing addiction has had a direct impact on respondents’ lives—predict increases in client deservingness, mediated by ascribed humanness and driven largely by EMS-providers. However, responding to opioid overdoses—an on-the-job lived experience—is associated with reduced deservingness and ascribed humanness. The study adds to the literature by expanding representative bureaucracy theory beyond race, ethnicity, and gender; broadening representation through lived experience beyond a focus on managers to include street-level bureaucrats; and incorporating concepts from social and political psychology that have yet to be integrated into representative bureaucracy studies.