Question | Answer |
Bureaucracy | A set of complex hierarchial departments, agencies, commissions, and their staffs that exist to help a chief executive officer carry out his or her duties. Beuraucracies may be private organizations of govermental units. |
Spoils System | The firing of public-office holders of a defeated political party and their replacement with loyalists of the newly elected party. |
Patronage | Jobs, grants, or other special favors that are given as rewards to friends and political allies for their support. |
Pendleton Act | Reform measure that created the Civil Service Commission to administer a partial merit system. The act classified the federal service by grades, to which appointments were made based on the results of a competitive examination. |
Civil Service System | The system created by civil service laws by which many appointments to the federal bureaucracy are made. |
Merit System | The system by which federal civil service jobs are classified into grades or levels, to which appointments are made on the basis of performance on competitive examinations. |
Independent Regulatory Commision | An agency created by Congress that is generally concerned with a specific aspect of the economy. |
Hatch Act | Law enacted in 1939 to prohibit civil servants from taking activist roles in partisan campaigns. This act prohibited federal employees from making political contributions, working for a particular party, or campaigning for a particular candidate. |
Federal Employees Political Activities Act | 1993 liberalization of the Hatch Act. Federal employees are now allowed to run for office in nonpartisan elections and to contribute money to campaigns in partisan elections. |
Departments | Major administrative units with responsibilty for a broad area of government operations. Departmental status usually indicates a permanent national interest in a particular governmental funcion, such as defense, commerce, or agriculture. |
Government Corporations | Businesses established by Congres that perform functions that could be provided by private businesses (such as the U.S. Postal Service). |
Independent Executive Agencies | Govermental units that closely resemble a Cabinet department but have a narrower area of responsibilty (such as the Central Intelligence Agency) and are not part of any Cabinet department. |
Implementation | The process by which a law or policy is put into operation by the bureaucracy. |
Iron Triangles | The relatively stable relationships and patterns of interaction that occur among an agency, interst groups, and congressional committees or subcommittees. |
Issue Networks | The loose and informal relationships that exist among a large number of actors who work in broad policy areas. |
Interagency Councils | Working groups created to facilitate coordination of policy making and implementation across a host of govermental agencies. |
Administrative Discretion | The ability of bureaucrats to make choices concerning the best way to implement congressional intentions. |
Rule Making | A qusi-legislative administrative process that has the characteristics of a leglislative act. |
Regulations | Rules that govern the operation of a particular goverment program that have the force of law. |
Administrative Adjudication | A quasi-judicial process in which a bureaucratic agency settles disputes between two parties in a manner similar to the way courts resolve disputes. |
Executive Orders | Rules or regulations issued by the president that have the effect of law. All executive orders must be published in the Federal Register. |