Chapter 11: Bureaucracies Flashcards
(30 cards)
Bureaucracy
An organization that exists to accomplice certain goals or objectives called public purposes and that consists of a group of people hired and arranged in a hierarchy because of specific duties they can perform.
Public Purpose
A goal or objective of a bureaucracy.
Bureaucrat
Individual working in the executive branch of government who have received their positions on the basis of some type of appointment.
Fourth Branch
Viewed as separate from the presidency, the collection of executive departments, independent establishments, and government corporations.
President’s Cabinet
political institution comprised mainly of executive department heads that collectively serve as a source of advice for the president.
Independent Agency
A type of bureaucratic unit organizationally located outside of an executive department and generally headed by a single individual.
Independent regulatory commission
A type of bureaucratic unit organizationally located outside of an executive department, headed by a group of individuals called a commission, and charged with regulating a specific industry or economic practice.
Government Corporation
A type of bureaucratic unit that offers some service for which the benefiting individual or institution most pay directly.
Spoils System
The practice of making appointments to government jobs on the basis of party loyalty and support in election campaigns.
Pendleton Act
legislation passed in 1883 that created a Civil Service Commission charged with the task of using merit, rather than partisan political connections, as a condition of government employment.
Hatch Act
Legislation that prohibits civil servants from participating in partisan political activity.
Civil Service Reform Act of 1978
Legislation designed to improve the level of performance of civil servants by creating incentives for high-quality work, protecting whistle-blowers, and making it easier to fire inadequate employees.
Senior Executive Service (SES)
created by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, a class of civil servants drawn from the highest grades and who might be given bonuses, transferred among on the quality of their work.
Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
Created in 1981 as part of the executive office of the President, this department focuses on the formulation coordination, and implementation of domestic and ecumenic policy, and provides staff support from the economic and domestic policy councils.
Merit System Protection Board
An agency charged with protecting individual employees against violations of the merit principle or actions taken against whistle-blowers.
Legislative veto
Congressional power, which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 1983, to halt an executive initiative by a vote of one or both houses or by a congressional committee.
Iron Triangle
The combination of interest group representatives, legislators, and government administrators seen as extremely influential in determining the outcome of political decisions.
Regulations
Rules devised by government agencies that shape the actions of individuals and groups in order to achieve purposes mandated by law.
Economic Regulations
Type of regulations in which a government agency issues rules that shape the structures of some industry, such as limiting entrance into the broadcast industry, such as limiting entrance into the broadcast industry, or banning or encouraging certain business practices.
Social Regulations
Type of regulation in which a government agency issues rules designed to achieve noneconomic policy goals, such as fair treatment in employment, clean air, or safe workplace.
Quasi-legislative
A function of regularity agencies in which they can make rules that, like legislation, apply to whole classes of people.
Quasi-judicial
A function of regulatory agencies in which, like a court, they can make decisions in individual cases.
Administrative law judge
An officer with relatively independent status in a regulatory agency who presides over and make findings in judicial proceedings in which the agency’s actions in individual cases are at issue.
Slip Law
The written theist of an act of congress.
