Bureaucracy Flashcards
Bureaucracy means?
refers to an organization with a hierarchical structure and specific responsibilities, which operates on management principles intended to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Bureaucracies exist in businesses, universities, and other organizational contexts; however, the general term bureaucracy is most frequently used to refer to government agencies
independent regulatory commissions
Organizational entities in the federal government that are not under the control of the president or a department
patronage or spoils system
A system that rewards the supporters of successful political candidates and parties with government jobs while firing supporters of the opposing party. In earlier eras, government employees throughout the bureaucracy could lose their jobs when a new president was elected from a different political party than his or her own. The same result was true in state and city governments when new governors and mayors were elected. Today new presidents appoint only the top leaders of federal departments and agencies.
civil service system
federal civil service system. Under this act, applicants for specified federal government jobs were supposed to be tested, demonstrate their qualifications, and keep their jobs based on competent performance rather than political affiliation.
Hatch Act
Federal law that limits the participation of federal government employees in political campaigns to protect them from feeling obligated to donate money or work for political candidates.
rule-making authority
Depending on their responsibilities, federal agencies may receive rule-making authority from the statutes that Congress enacts. The rule-making process gives officials in the bureaucracy power over the development of public policy.
Officials in the bureaucracy also create law and policy through rule-making processes for developing, changing, and eliminating regulations.
Regulations
Legal rules created by government agencies based on authority delegated by the legislature. For example, in order to protect public safety, regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation define how many hours each week truck drivers can be on the road and how many hours of rest they must have between driving shifts.
What is the federal bureaucracy
The roots of the federal bureaucracy go back to the original U.S. Constitution of 1787. Article I, Section 8, gives Congress the power to enact laws for specified purposes. These include matters such as “lay and collect taxes,” “coin Money,” “establish Post Offices,” and “provide and maintain a Navy.” The president, as the head of the executive branch, is responsible for carrying out the nation’s laws.
What do its departments and agencies do?
Thus, the founding document explicitly acknowledged that government agencies, called “departments,” would be established to carry out laws and programs.
DEPARTMENT
Any of the 15 major government agencies responsible for specific policy areas whose heads are usually called secretaries and serve in the president’s cabinet. For example, the U.S. Department of State, led during the Obama administration by Secretary John Kerry, the former U.S. senator from Massachusetts, is responsible for managing relationships with foreign governments and issuing passports to U.S. citizens.
Bureaucracy
An organization with a hierarchical structure and specific responsibilities intended to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. In government, it refers to departments and agencies in the executive branch. For example, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is an agency in the federal bureaucracy that carries out national tax laws through collection of income taxes and investigation of individuals and businesses that fail to pay the taxes required by the laws created by Congress.
What factors help explain the development and growth of the federal bureaucracy
Roosevelt administration’s programs to address the Depression and World War II dramatically increased the size of the federal bureaucracy. during the Roosevelt administration (see Figure 8.1). By the end of FDR’s presidency in 1945, not only had the public accepted the federal government’s involvement in a variety of policy issues, but many Americans had come to expect federal action on important matters, eventually including such areas as education and criminal justice, which had traditionally been the exclusive preserve of state and local governments. Moreover, World War II had demonstrated the necessity of combining the War and Navy departments (as well as the newly created Air Force department) within a single structure, the Department of Defense.
- Study Figure 8.1: Growth in the Size of the Federal Bureaucracy.
he New Deal. The Roosevelt administration (1933–1945) contributed enormously to the growth in the federal bureaucracy by initiating various governmental programs, first in response to the Great Depression and later to wage World War II.
Study Table 8.2. Which department has the largest number of employees? The second largest?
Department of Defense (729,559 civilian employees)
Department of Veterans Affairs (323,208 employees)
What is the public’s image of the federal bureaucracy?
The popular image of the bureaucracy is of large, impersonal organizations that are inefficient and unresponsive.
What are the advantages of bureaucracy?
The advantages of a bureaucracy stem from providing organizations with clear lines of authority in which each employee has specific responsibilities and expertise. Ideally, bureaucracies are useful for standardization and consistency in providing government services
name the four advantages of ideal bureaucracy
Coordination. Accountability. Expertise and Competence. Standardization
What are the problems with government bureaucracy?
decisions must move through a chain of command, there are obvious risks of delay, including the chance that documents will be misplaced or lost so that new forms must be completed to start a decision-making process all over again.
executive agencies are slow to implement new laws, they can hinder or even undermine the achievement of a president’s policy goals.
When agencies are large bureaucracies, it can be exceptionally difficult to organize, implement, and monitor programs effectively.
