EXAM 3 Flashcards
The short, 2-year terms in the House of Representatives were designed by the Framers of the Constitution to ______.
keep the House as close to the people as possible
Which of the following are true about unanimous consent agreements in the Senate?
They can be killed by a single objection.
The use of rules in the House of Representatives ______.
specifies when, how long, and under what procedures a bill will be considered
The modern presidency ______.
represents a cumulative product of the changing place of Washington in national policy and world affairs
How does Article II define executive power?
It is long on generalities and short on details but embodies limits on presidential discretion.
While executive actions may have the force of law, they lack ______.
permanence
3 conditions that contribute to a president’s ability to persuade:
bargaining advantages inherent in the oce
president’s professional reputation
public prestige and support
modern presidency
the president oversees a larger executive branch today
changes in public expectations over the president’s role
unitary executive
the president is in charge of the executive branch
Take Care clause
I can do whatever I want as long as the Constitution (or current
law) doesn’t explicitly say I cannot
if we see the president
veto a bill
issue an executive order
claim he can do what he wants as a unitary executive
chances are that means he couldn’t get Congress, or the bureaucracy,
or the courts, or some other actor to go along with what he wanted
U.S. Congress
House members are elected every two years, Congress works
in two-year increments
The committee system
created to help Congress manage its
workload
Specifically, the workload is broken up by issue
seniority rule in congress
the longest-serving member is the chair (or ranking member)
House Budget Committee members are term-limited
only sit on the committee for 8 years out of any 12 year
period
Appropriations
Guardians of the Treasury; also control which programs and
districts/states get money
taxation committees
almost everything involves taxes in some way
Senate Foreign Relations
only the Senate deals with treaties
Senate Judiciary
only the Senate deals with judicial nominations
House Energy and Commerce
jurisdiction includes almost
everything
committees do two things
-develop/revise legislation and decide which bills will move
forward
-conduct oversight of existing laws over exec. branch and private
sector
Hearings
be just about an issue or about a specific bill
Markups
business meetings where the committee considers a bill
in its jurisdiction
House of Representatives: Speaker of the House
-technically a non-partisan position
-doesn’t even have to be a member of Congress
-over time has come to be the leader of the majority party faction
Senate: President of the Senate
-not really a leadership position or a member of Congress
-this is the Vice President’s other job
duty is really just to oversee debate, cast tie-breaking votes
how a bill becomes a law
someone has an idea, it gets written up and given a number
suspension of the rules
two-thirds of legislators must support it to pass
and can only happen a few days per week
conference committee
-both representatives and senators from both parties who sit on
committees of jurisdiction
-conference committee reaches some compromise and issues a
conference report, which House and Senate vote on
ping pong
the House and Senate debate and amend a bill back and forth,
back and forth, until they both pass the same version
Multiple referral (a bill being referred to multiple committees):
often happens when the topic overlaps dierent committees’
jurisdiction
Post-committee adjustments
changes made to the bill between when the committee approves
it and when it’s debated on the oor
Restrictive amendments
House debate rules increasingly allow no amendments, or very
few, specic amendments
Complex unanimous consent agreements
not just asking unanimous consent to begin debating a bill, but
treating them more like a Rules Committee resolution
descriptive representation
-they share descriptive characteristics (gender, race, ethnicity,
employment or economic background, etc.)
-the idea is that even if you don’t vote for them directly, having
people in government who look like you can be important
Bureaucratic discretion can be determined by several factors:
-what Congress says in the law
-what the president wants the bureaucracy to do (within the law)
-what the courts say (how they interpret the law’s language)
-policy implementers’ own experiences, background, and training
-interactions with we, the people
Top-down
how Congress and the president delegate and decide what
the bureaucracy does
Bottom-up
how the realities of implementation inuence what
Congress/the president do
Biggest problem facing principals
: lack of information (information
asymmetry)
Agency theory
developed for organizations and rms, imported to
political science
First tier
we (the voters) are principals who delegate responsibility
for political decisions to the people we elect; they are our agents
Second tier
as part of their jobs, our elected ocials delegate to
un-elected bureaucrats
politicization
nominating people who share his preferences
(either issue priorities or specic outcomes)
centralization
increase sta in executive oce
▶ have White House sta do some jobs that would otherwise be
done in agencies
role in selection
legislatures often have to approve nominations, so they can nd
agents closer to their own preferences
budgets as incentives/sanctions
legislatures usually have more control over agency budgets
monitoring
oversight hearings
reporting requirements
make bureaucracy tell you want they’re doing, keeps them busy
so they can’t do something legislature doesn’t want
metering: write goals into law
but sometimes legislatures only have general goals, up a bureaucracy to define specifically
neutral competence
principals best served by nonpartisan, neutral expertise to inform
whatever political decisions they make
political responsiveness
agents are there to carry out what their direct principals want no
matter what
Bureaucrats often must satisfy both:
they’re issue experts who serve many dierent principals
but they also operate in the political environment
Street-level bureaucrats:
-public service workers who interact directly with citizens over the course of their jobs
-tend to have substantial discretion in the execution of their work
bottom-up
approach to understanding policy implementation
focuses on these front-line bureaucrats
Pendleton Act
created a bipartisan commission to evaluate,
hire candidates based on merit
Hatch Act
prohibits direct political activity by govt. employees
in their capacity as govt. employees
why we have congress
Congress, as one of the three coequal branches of government, is ascribed significant powers by the Constitution. All legislative power in the government is vested in Congress, meaning that it is the only part of the government that can make new laws or change existing laws.
How a bill becomes a law
If a bill has passed in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and has been approved by the President, or if a presidential veto has been overridden, the bill becomes a law and is enforced by the government.
Dyadic representation
refers to the degree to which and ways by which elected legislators represent the preferences or interests of the specific geographic constituencies from which they are elected.
Electoral accountability
refers to citizens using the vote to sanction or reward politicians, but other forms of political accountability do exist.
The Presidency - What Article II says
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;
The Presidency - What Article II says
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;
Neustadt and presidential power
- “Presidential power is the power to persuade. The power to persuade is the power to bargain.”
presidential memorandum
an official document issued by the president in order to manage the federal government.
