Ch 8,10-12 Key Terms Flashcards
The administrative branch of government, consisting of all executive offices and their workers.
Bureaucracy
A decision-making approach in the budgetary process in which the previous year’s expenditures are used as a base for the current year’s budget figures.
Incrementalism
A budget that lists detailed expenditure items such as personal computers and paper, with no attention to the goals or objectives of spending.
Line Item Budget
Budgeting that takes into account the outcomes of government programs.
Performance Budgeting
A budget that plans large expenditures for long-term investments, such as buildings and bridges.
Capital Budget
The organization of government personnel to provide for hiring and promotion on the basis of knowledge, skills, and abilities rather than patronage or other influences.
Merit System
The concept that public employees should perform their duties competently and without regard for political considerations.
Neutral Competence
The concept that all major groups in society should participate proportionately in government work.
Representative Bureaucracy
Special efforts to recruit, hire, and promote members of disadvantaged groups to eliminate the effects of past discrimination.
Affirmative Action
A formal arrangement in which representatives of labor and management negotiate wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Collective Bargaining
The ability of public employees to make decisions interpreting law and administrative regulations.
Bureaucratic Discretion
Groups that benefit from a specific government program, such as contractors and construction firms in state highway department spending programs.
Clientele Groups
An administrative reform movement that argues government should manage for results, through entrepreneurial activity, privatization, and improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.
New Public Management
Involves service delivery through combined efforts of government, citizens, nonprofits, and/or businesses.
Coproduction
The use of information technology to simplify and improve interactions between governments and citizens , firms, public employees, and other entities.
E-Government
A local government that performs a wide range of functions.
General-Purpose Local Government
A local government, such as a school district, that performs a specific functions.
Single-Purpose Local Government
A central city of at least 50,000 people and its surrounding county (or countries); often called an urban area.
Metropolitan Area
An urban cluster with a population between 10,000 and 49,999.
Micropolitan Statistical Area
A broad grant of power from the state to a local government.
Home Rule
The existence of multiple local governments in the same territory.
Jurisdictional Overlap
The creation of a municipality through the granting of a charter from the state.
Incorporation
A document that sets out a city’s structure, authority, and functions.
Charter
The mayor is empowered to perform the executive functions of government and has a veto over city council actions.
Strong-Mayor-Council Structure
The mayor lacks formal executive power; the city council (of which the mayor is a member) is the source of executive and legislative power.
Weak-Mayor-Council Structure
A professional administrator hired by a city council to handle the day-to-day operation of the city.
City Manager
Enacted by the governing body, it is the local government equivalent of a statute.
Ordinance
The addition of unincorporated adjacent territory to a municipality.
Annexation
The ability of a city government to control certain practices in an adjacent, unincorporated area.
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ)
Citywide (or countywide) contests to determine the members of a city council (or county commission).
At-Large Elections
Elections in which the voters in one district or ward of a jurisdiction (city, county, school district) vote for a candidate to represent that district.
District (Ward) Elections
Candidates compete at large and voters can cast as many votes as there are seats to be filled, either as a bloc for one candidate or spread out among several candidates.
Cumulative Voting
An annual event at which a town’s residents enact ordinances, elect officials, levy taxes, and adopt a budget.
Town Meeting
A type of special district funded by non-tax revenue and governed by an appointed board.
Public Authority
A means of distributing funds (primarily to school districts) to reduce financial disparities among districts.
Equalization Formula
A theory of government that asserts that a small group possesses power and rules society.
Elite Theory
A theory of government that asserts that multiple, open, competing groups possess power and rule society.
Pluralist Theory
A method for studying community power in which researchers ask informants to name and rank influential individuals.
Reputational Approach
A method for studying community power in which researchers identify key issues and the individuals who are active in the decision-making process.
Decisional Method
The informal arrangements that surround and complement the formal workings of governmental authority.
Regime
Private sector groups that carry out charitable, educational, religious, literary, service, or scientific functions.
Nonprofit Organizations
A condition characterized by a large number of groups and interests.
Hyperpluralism
A government action assuming ownership of real property by eminent domain.
Taking
The de-emphasis of race in politics, especially in campaigns, so that there is less racial bloc voting.
Deracialization
A period in the early twentieth century that focused on reforming or cleaning up government.
Progressive Era
A label used in some communities for members of a local legislative body, such as a city council.
Aldermen
A rule that limits the powers of local government to those expressly granted by the state or those powers closely linked to the express powers.
Dillon’s Rule
A shift in power from state government to local government.
Second-Order Devolution
Measures that take the financial sting out of state mandates.
Mandate-Reimbursement Requirements
New boom towns featuring retail shops and malls, restaurants, office buildings, and housing developments, far from the central city.
Edge Cities
Development characterized by low population density, rapid land consumption, and dependence on the automobile.
Urban Sprawl
A charge levied on new development to offset some of the costs of providing services.
Impact Fee
Government efforts to limit urban sprawl by managing growth.
Smart Growth
Entities, especially unofficial ones, that functions like governments.
Shadow Governments
An area-wide structure for local governance, designed to replace multiple jurisdictions.
Regional Governments
The merger of city and county governments into a single jurisdictions.
City-County Consolidation
The theory that individuals shop around to find a local government whose taxes and services are in line with their own preferences.
Public Choice Theory
Formal organizations of general-purpose governments in an area, intended to improve regional coordination.
Councils of Government
The replacement of lower-value housing and businesses with higher-value residential and commercial development. Property values increase and longtime residents are often displaced.
Gentrification
An anti-suburban, pro-small-town version of city planning.
New Urbanism
