AP Module 3.3 Flashcards
A form of organization that operates through impersonal, uniform regulations and procedures.
Bureaucracy
A negative term for describing a career government employee.
Bureaucrat
A government agency that operates outside a traditional government department, but under the president’s direct control.
Independent Stand-alone Agency
A government agency or commission with regulatory power whose independence is protected by Congress.
Independent Regulatory Commission
A government agency that is designed like a business corporation and is created to secure greater freedom of action and flexibility for a particular program.
Government Corporation
Established by Congress in 1978 as a flexible, mobile corps of senior career executives who work closely with presidential appointees to manage government.
Senior Executive Service
Federal employees who work for government through a competitive, not political, selection process.
Civil Service
A system of public employment based on rewarding party loyalists and friends.
Spoils System
The process of awarding favors to the party in power.
Patronage
A system of public employment in which selection and promotion depend on demonstrated performance rather than political patronage.
Merit System
An agency that administers civil service laws and regulations.
Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
An independent agency that oversees and protects merit in the federal government personnel system.
Merit System Protection Board
A federal statute barring federal employees from active participation in certain kinds of politics and protecting them from being fired on partisan grounds.
Hatch Act
The process of putting a law into practice through bureaucratic regulations or spending.
Implementation
Authority given by Congress to the federal bureaucracy to use reasonable judgment in implementing the laws.
Administrative Discretion
A precise statement of how a law is implemented.
Regulation
The detailed process for drafting regulation.
Rule-making Process
An official document, published every weekday, that lists the new proposed regulations of executive departments and regulatory agencies.
Federal Register
A variation of an independent regulatory agency with a chairman and board that controls the supply of money that flows through the U.S. economy.
Federal Reserve Board
The portion of the federal budget that is spent on previously enacted programs, such as Social Security, that the president and Congress are unwilling to cut.
Uncontrollable Spending
Program such as unemployment insurance, disaster relief, or disability payments that provide benefits to all eligible citizens.
Entitlement Program
Legislative or executive review of a particular government program or organization that can be in response to a crisis of some kind or part of routine review.
Oversight
Review of all executive branch testimony, reports, and draft legislation by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to ensure that each communication to Congress is in accordance with the president’s program.
Central Clearance
A specific course of action that the government takes to address a problem.
Public Policy
The interaction of the people and their government, including citizens, interest groups, political parties, and the institutions of government at all levels. Politics is concerned with who gets what, where, and how from government.
Politics
An individual or group that makes the actual choices to create a public policy.
Policy Maker
A public policy such as Social Security that provides benefits to all groups in society.
Distributive Policy
A policy that provides to one group of society while taking away benefits from another through policy solutions such as tax increases to pay for job training.
Redistributive Policy
A policy that takes away benefits or money from one group to give to another.
Zero-sum Game
A policy that reduces benefits for all groups, often by imposing regulations or taxes that govern everyone, rich or poor.
Reverse Distributive Policy
A decision not to move ahead with the policy process. In short, it is a decision not to decide.
Nondecision
The list of issues that the federal government pays attention to.
Policy Agenda
A nongovernmental organization that seeks to influence public policy through research and education.
Think Tank
The movement of public opinion toward public policy from initial enthusiasm for action to realization of costs and a decline in interest.
Issue-attention Cycle
Small adjustments to existing public policies.
Incremental Policy
Radical changes to public policy that occur only after the mobilization of large segments of society to demand action.
Punctuating Policy
A policy-making instrument composed of a tightly related alliance of a congressional committee, interest groups, and a federal department or agency.
Iron Triangle
A policy-making instrument composed of loosely related interest groups, congressional committees, presidential aides, and other parties.
Issue Network
