POLI CH.13 Flashcards
bureaucracy
A large, complex organization in which employees have specific job responsibilities and work within a hierarchy of authority.
bureaucrats
Employees of a bureaucracy, usually meaning a government bureaucracy
departments
The biggest units of the executive branch, covering a broad area of government responsibility. The heads of the departments, or secretaries, form the president’s cabinet.
independent agencies
Executive agencies that are not
part of a cabinet department.
regulatory commissions
Agencies of the executive branch of government that control or direct some aspect of the economy.
government corporations
Government agencies that perform services that might be provided by the private sector but that either involve insufficient financial incentive or are better provided when they are some how linked with government.
civil service
The system by which most appointments to the federal bureaucracy are made, to ensure that government jobs are filled on the basis of merit and that employees are not fired for political reasons.
administrative discretion
The latitude that Congress gives agencies to make policy in the spirit of their legislative mandate.
rule making
The administrative process that results in the issuance of regulations by government agencies.
regulations
Administrative rules that guide the operation of a government program
incrementalism
Policymaking characterized by a series of decisions, each typically instituting modest change.
norms
An organization’s informal, unwritten rules that guide individual behavior.
implementation
The process of putting specific policies into operation.
regulation
Government intervention in the workings of a business market to promote some socially desired goal.
deregulation
A bureaucratic reform by which the government reduces its role as a regulator of business.
