The Federal Bureaucracy Quiz

The Federal Bureaucracy

• Bureaucracy: An organization executing tasks with rules and procedures.
• Federal Bureaucracy: Executive branch departments and agencies carrying out national laws.
• Bureaucrats: Government officials within a bureaucracy, ensuring safety and fair practices for businesses and the environment.
• Constitutional Basis: Primarily Article II, outlining executive branch functions and executive departments .
• Secretaries: Heads of executive departments, forming the President's cabinet along with the Vice President and other office heads.
• Political Patronage: Filling administrative positions based on support rather than merit.
• Pendleton Act (1883): Established the US Civil Service Commission, creating rules for hiring, promotion, and tenure in the civil service.
• Federal Civil Service: Merit-based bureaucracy, excluding armed forces and political appointments.
• Merit System: Hiring/promotion based on testing, education, etc., rather than politics or connections.

Structure of the Modern Federal Bureaucracy

• Presidential Control: Appoints top officials, directs/advises departments.
• Congressional Control: Approving nominees, impeaching officers, controlling resources and budgets.
  • Main administrative units: 15 cabinet departments handling specific policy areas.
• Pyramid Structure: Political appointees at the top, SES (Senior Executive Service) middle, career civil servants at the bottom.
• Bureaucratic Forms: Sometimes overly complicated.
• Dismissals: Difficult as bureaucratic firing takes a long time. Thus managers prefer movement.

Iron Triangles and Issue Networks

• Iron Triangle: Interactions among bureaucracy, Congress, and interest groups to advance shared policy goals.
• Issue Networks: Influence networks between groups, policymakers, and advocates, typically temporary and focused on specific problems.

Bureaucracy and Policy Making

• Implementation: Executing laws passed by Congress, often with broad guidelines.
• Policy Agenda: Set of issues policymakers address. Getting a policy on the agenda requires debate, Congressional passage, and presidential signing. Funding is crucial for agency implementation.
• Street-Level Bureaucrats: Front-line workers with significant interactions with citizens (e.g., police, teachers, social workers).
• Bureaucratic Discretion: Power of agencies to interpret laws and implement them.
• Regulation: Detailing legislation with the force of law. Requires notice-and-comment periods, publishing in the Federal Register and sometimes bureaucratic adjudication.
• Regulatory Agencies: Over 100 agencies in the national government with regulatory responsibilities.
• Bureaucratic Adjudication: Agencies act like courts in resolving disputes related to regulations.

Checks on the Bureaucracy

• Presidential Checks: Appointing, removing officials, setting priorities.
• Congressional Checks: Confirmation of appointees, creating/terminating agencies, controlling resources.
• Judicial Checks: Can limit bureaucratic action (e.g., Michigan v. EPA).
• Media Influence: Can create public pressure.
• Bureaucracy Reform: Attempts to limit power, reduce size, and improve efficiency (e.g., devolving responsibilities, deregulation, privatization).

Hatch Act

• Restricts political activities of federal employees, with exceptions for highest-level political appointees.
• Prohibits participation in campaigns, coercing employees, raising campaign funds, and holding but a few elective offices.