The Executive Branch/Federal Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy: A set of complex hierarchical departments, agencies, commissions, and their staffs that exist to help a chief executive officer carry out his or her duties. Bureaucracies may be private organizations of governmental units. 

Max Weber: believed bureaucracies were a rational way for complex societies to organize themselves. Bureaucracies have: 
1. A chain of command
2. A division of labor among specialized workers
3. Clear lines of authority
4. A goal orientation that determines structure, authority and rules
5. Impersonality- all employees treated fairly based on merit
6. Productivity: all work evaluated according to established rules

Spoils System: The firing of public-office holders of a defeated political party and their replacement with loyalists of the newly elected party. 

Patronage: Jobs, grants, or other special favors that are given as rewards to friends and political alliesfor their support. 

Pendleton Act: Reform measure that created the Civil Service Commission to administer a partial merit system. The act classified the federal service by grades, to which appointments were made based on results of a competitive examination. It made it illegal for federal political appointees to be required to contribute to a particular party. 

Merit system: The system by which federal civil service jobs are classified into grades or levels, to which appointments are made on the basis of performance on competitive examinations. 

Federal Trade Commission: Created by Congress in 1914 to protect small businesses and the public from unfair competition, especially from big business. 

Hatch Act: Law enacted in 1939 to prohibit civil servants from taking activist roles in partisan campaigns. This act prohibited federal employees from making political contributions, working for a particular party, or campaigning for a particular candidate. 

Federal Employee Political Activities Act: 1993 liberalization of the Hatch Act. Federal employees are now allowed to run for office in nonpartisan elections and to contribute money to campaigns in partisan elections. 

Departments (e): Major administrative units with responsibility for a broad area of government operations. Departmental status usually indicates a permanent national interest in a particular governmental function, such as defense, commerce, or agriculture. 

Government Corporations (e): Businesses established by Congress that perform functions that could be provided by private businesses (Such as US Postal Service) 

Independent Executive Agencies (e): Governmental units that closely resemble a Cabinet department but have a narrower area of responsibility (such as CIA) and are not part of any Cabinet department. 

Independent Regulatory Commissions (e): agencies created by Congress to exist outside the major departments to regulate a specific economic activity of interest. (ex. National Labor Relations Board, Federal Reserve Board, Securities and Exchange Commission) 

Implementation: The process by which a law or policy is put into operation by the bureaucracy. 

Iron Triangle (e): The relatively stable relationships and patterns of interaction that occur among an agency, interest groups, and congressional committees or subcommittees. (ex. Department of Veterans Affairs and the House Committee on Veteran Affairs or American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars) 

Issue Networks: The loose and informal relationships that exist among a large number of actors who work in broad policy areas. 

Interagency Councils: Councils within agencies, designed to give council to such agencies and agents of the agencies. Agents may also give council to other agents within their own agency, or they cannot and say they did. 

Administrative Discretion: The ability of bureaucracies to make choices concerning the best way to implement interfaces in a java program, or congressional intentions. 

Rule Making: A quasi-legislative administrative process that has the characteristics of a legislative act. 

Regulations: Rules that govern the operation of a particular government program that have the force of law. 

Administrative Procedures Act: 1946 established rule-making procedures to give everyone the chance to participate in the process. Required: 
1. Public notice of the time, place, and nature of the rule-making procedures to be provided tin the Federal Register. 
2. Interested parties be given the opportunity to submit written arguments and facts relevant to the rule
3. The statutory purpose and basis of the rule must be stated. 

Administrative adjudication: A quasi-judicial process in which a bureaucratic agency settles disputes between two parties in a manner similar to the way courts resolve disputes.  

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