EXAM 3

Question 1

The short, 2-year terms in the House of Representatives were designed by the Framers of the Constitution to ______.

Answer 1

keep the House as close to the people as possible

Question 2

Which of the following are true about unanimous consent agreements in the Senate?

Answer 2

They can be killed by a single objection.

Question 3

The use of rules in the House of Representatives ______.

Answer 3

specifies when, how long, and under what procedures a bill will be considered

Question 4

The modern presidency ______.

Answer 4

represents a cumulative product of the changing place of Washington in national policy and world affairs

Question 5

How does Article II define executive power?

Answer 5

It is long on generalities and short on details but embodies limits on presidential discretion.

Question 6

While executive actions may have the force of law, they lack ______.

Answer 6

permanence

Question 7

3 conditions that contribute to a president’s ability to persuade:

Answer 7

bargaining advantages inherent in the oce
president’s professional reputation
public prestige and support

Question 8

modern presidency

Answer 8

the president oversees a larger executive branch today
changes in public expectations over the president’s role

Question 9

unitary executive

Answer 9

the president is in charge of the executive branch

Question 10

Take Care clause

Answer 10

I can do whatever I want as long as the Constitution (or current
law) doesn’t explicitly say I cannot

Question 11

if we see the president
veto a bill
issue an executive order
claim he can do what he wants as a unitary executive

Answer 11

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

Question 12

U.S. Congress

Answer 12

House members are elected every two years, Congress works
in two-year increments

Question 13

The committee system

Answer 13

created to help Congress manage its
workload
Specifically, the workload is broken up by issue

Question 14

seniority rule in congress

Answer 14

the longest-serving member is the chair (or ranking member)

Question 15

House Budget Committee members are term-limited

Answer 15

only sit on the committee for 8 years out of any 12 year
period

Question 16

Appropriations

Answer 16

Guardians of the Treasury; also control which programs and
districts/states get money

Question 17

taxation committees

Answer 17

almost everything involves taxes in some way

Question 18

Senate Foreign Relations

Answer 18

only the Senate deals with treaties

Question 19

Senate Judiciary

Answer 19

only the Senate deals with judicial nominations

Question 20

House Energy and Commerce

Answer 20

jurisdiction includes almost
everything

Question 21

committees do two things

Answer 21

-develop/revise legislation and decide which bills will move
forward
-conduct oversight of existing laws over exec. branch and private
sector

Question 22

Hearings

Answer 22

be just about an issue or about a specific bill

Question 23

Markups

Answer 23

business meetings where the committee considers a bill
in its jurisdiction

Question 24

House of Representatives: Speaker of the House

Answer 24

-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

Question 25

Senate: President of the Senate

Answer 25

-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

Question 26

how a bill becomes a law

Answer 26

someone has an idea, it gets written up and given a number

Question 27

suspension of the rules

Answer 27

two-thirds of legislators must support it to pass
and can only happen a few days per week

Question 28

conference committee

Answer 28

-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

Question 29

ping pong

Answer 29

the House and Senate debate and amend a bill back and forth,
back and forth, until they both pass the same version

Question 30

Multiple referral (a bill being referred to multiple committees):

Answer 30

often happens when the topic overlaps dierent committees’
jurisdiction

Question 31

Post-committee adjustments

Answer 31

changes made to the bill between when the committee approves
it and when it’s debated on the oor

Question 32

Restrictive amendments

Answer 32

House debate rules increasingly allow no amendments, or very
few, specic amendments

Question 33

Complex unanimous consent agreements

Answer 33

not just asking unanimous consent to begin debating a bill, but
treating them more like a Rules Committee resolution

Question 34

descriptive representation

Answer 34

-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

Question 35

Bureaucratic discretion can be determined by several factors:

Answer 35

-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

Question 36

Top-down

Answer 36

how Congress and the president delegate and decide what
the bureaucracy does

Question 37

Bottom-up

Answer 37

how the realities of implementation inuence what
Congress/the president do

Question 38

Biggest problem facing principals

Answer 38

: lack of information (information
asymmetry)

Question 39

Agency theory

Answer 39

developed for organizations and rms, imported to
political science

Question 40

First tier

Answer 40

we (the voters) are principals who delegate responsibility
for political decisions to the people we elect; they are our agents

Question 41

Second tier

Answer 41

as part of their jobs, our elected ocials delegate to
un-elected bureaucrats

Question 42

politicization

Answer 42

nominating people who share his preferences
(either issue priorities or specic outcomes)

Question 43

centralization

Answer 43

increase sta in executive oce
▶ have White House sta do some jobs that would otherwise be
done in agencies

Question 44

role in selection

Answer 44

legislatures often have to approve nominations, so they can nd
agents closer to their own preferences

Question 45

budgets as incentives/sanctions

Answer 45

legislatures usually have more control over agency budgets

Question 46

monitoring

Answer 46

oversight hearings

Question 47

reporting requirements

Answer 47

make bureaucracy tell you want they’re doing, keeps them busy
so they can’t do something legislature doesn’t want

Question 48

metering: write goals into law

Answer 48

but sometimes legislatures only have general goals, up a bureaucracy to define specifically

Question 49

neutral competence

Answer 49

principals best served by nonpartisan, neutral expertise to inform
whatever political decisions they make

Question 50

political responsiveness

Answer 50

agents are there to carry out what their direct principals want no
matter what

Question 51

Bureaucrats often must satisfy both:

Answer 51

they’re issue experts who serve many dierent principals
but they also operate in the political environment

Question 52

Street-level bureaucrats:

Answer 52

-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

Question 53

bottom-up

Answer 53

approach to understanding policy implementation
focuses on these front-line bureaucrats

Question 54

Pendleton Act

Answer 54

created a bipartisan commission to evaluate,
hire candidates based on merit

Question 55

Hatch Act

Answer 55

prohibits direct political activity by govt. employees
in their capacity as govt. employees

Question 56

why we have congress

Answer 56

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.

Question 57

How a bill becomes a law

Answer 57

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.

Question 58

Dyadic representation

Answer 58

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.

Question 59

Electoral accountability

Answer 59

refers to citizens using the vote to sanction or reward politicians, but other forms of political accountability do exist.

Question 60

The Presidency - What Article II says

Answer 60

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;

Question 60

The Presidency - What Article II says

Answer 60

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;

Question 61

Neustadt and presidential power

Answer 61

• “Presidential power is the power to persuade. The power to persuade is the power to bargain.”

Question 62

presidential memorandum

Answer 62

an official document issued by the president in order to manage the federal government.