Unit 5 Vocab (Executive Branch & Bureaucracy)

Question 1

Independent regulatory commission

Answer 1

A government agency responsible for some sector of the economy, making and enforcing rules to protect the public interest. It also judges disputes over these rules.

Question 2

Patronage

Answer 2

The practice of granting favors to reward party loyalty

Question 3

Pendleton Civil Service Act

Answer 3

Passed in 1883, an Act that created a federal civil service so that hiring and promotion would be based on merit rather than patronage.

Question 4

Civil service

Answer 4

A system of hiring and promotion based on the merit principle and the desire to create a nonpartisan government service.

Question 5

Merit principle

Answer 5

The idea that hiring should be based on entrance exams and promotion ratings to produce administration by people with talent and skill

Question 6

Hatch act

Answer 6

A federal law prohibiting government employees from active participation in partisan politics

Question 7

Office of personal management

Answer 7

The office in charge of hiring for most agencies of the federal government, using elaborate rules in the process.

Question 8

GS rating

Answer 8

A schedule for federal employees, ranging from GS 1 to GS 18, by which salaries can be keyed to rating and experience.

Question 9

Senior executive service

Answer 9

An elite cadre of about 9,000 federal government managers at the top of the civil service system.

Question 10

Standard operating procedures

Answer 10

Better known as SOPs, these procedures are used by bureaucrats to bring uniformity to complex organizations. Uniformity improves fairness and makes personnel interchangeable.

Question 11

Administrative discretion

Answer 11

The authority of administrative actors to select among various responses to a given problem. Discretion is greatest when routines, or standard operating procedures, do not fit a case.

Question 12

Street-level bureaucrats

Answer 12

A phrase coined by Michael Lipsky, referring to those bureaucrats who are in constant contact with the public and have considerable administrative discretion.

Question 13

Iron triangles

Answer 13

A mutually dependent relationship between bureaucratic agencies, interest groups, and congressional committees or subcommittees. They dominate some areas of domestic policymaking.

Question 14

Freedom of informative act

Answer 14

is a federal freedom of information law that requires the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government upon request