Chapter 13 The Federal Bureaucracy

Which federal agency was lax in requiring the proper safety procedures that could have prevented the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

Minerals Management Service

The principles on which bureaucratic organization is based include which of the following?

hierarchical authority, job specialization, and formalized rules

Modern bureaucracy in America is BEST characterized in terms of

hierarchy, specialization, and rules.

In promoting their agency’s goals, bureaucrats rely on

all of these: their expert knowledge; the backing of the president and Congress; and the support of clientele groups.

Which of the following agencies or departments is likely to have strong allies from a group of particular states in Congress?

the Department of Agriculture

In the late 1800s, rapid economic growth placed new demands on the federal government and led it to

create new federal departments built around economic interests.

The Department of ________ was founded in 1889.

agriculture

The number of employees in the federal bureaucracy is about ________.

2.5 million

Compared to the president and Congress, the bureaucracy

has a more direct impact on the daily lives of Americans.

The cabinet department with the largest number of full-time civilian employees is the Department of

Defense

The Department of ________ was created in 2002.

Homeland Security

Which of the following statements does NOT correctly describe the typical independent agency?

Its head is appointed by an independent commission.

Whenever Congress has a perceived need for ongoing control of an economic activity, it has tended to create a

regulatory agency.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are

respectively, an agency within a cabinet department, an independent agency, and a regulatory agency.

Federal regulatory agencies have responsibility primarily in the area of

economic policy

Regulatory agencies have

administrative, legislative, and judicial functions.

Amtrak is an example of a(n)

government corporation

Most federal employees are hired on the basis of

merit criteria

When it was developed during the Jackson administration, the patronage system was designed to

tie the administration more closely to the people it served.

As distinct from the patronage system, the merit system for managing the bureaucracy

provides for a neutral administration in the sense that civil servants are not partisan appointees, thus ensuring evenhanded work.

The ________ established a merit system for certain federal positions.

Pendleton Act

The federal bureaucracy today is

a mix of the patronage and merit systems.

The administrative concept of neutral competence holds that the bureaucracy should

be staffed by people chosen on the basis of ability and do its work fairly on behalf of all citizens.

Which of the following is true of federal employees and labor unions?

Federal employees can form labor unions, but their unions by law have limited authority.

Federal civil service employees cannot legally

go on strike

At the start of the annual budget cycle, the OMB assigns each agency a budget limit based on

the president’s directives.

Which of the following steps in the federal budgetary process occurs EARLIEST?

the president consults with the OMB on agency instructions

Which of the following steps in the federal budgetary process occurs LATEST?

Congress completes work on the appropriations bills

Upon reaching Congress, what first happens to the president’s budget proposal?

It goes to the House and Senate budget committees.

What is the congressional equivalent of the Office of Management and Budget?

Congressional Budget Office

What happens to the president’s budget if it is approved by a vote of the House and Senate?

It is sent to the president to sign or veto.

The federal government’s fiscal year starts on

October 1.

Policy implementation refers to the bureaucratic function of

carrying out decisions made by Congress, the president, and the courts.

What is the chief way administrative agencies exercise control over policy?

legislative rule-making

Bureaucrats are ________ and elected officials are ________.

specialists; generalists

________ is/are most likely to understand trade issues in the United States.

Career bureaucrats in the Department of Commerce and the Federal Trade Commission

The special interests that benefit directly from a bureaucratic agency’s programs are called

clientele groups.

The importance of clientele groups was especially clear in 1995 when House Speaker Newt Gingrich threatened to "zero out" funding for the

Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Regarding the educational background of bureaucrats, high-ranking civil servants in continental Europe, compared to American bureaucrats, tend to have a college major specializing in

law

Studies have found that the U.S. federal bureaucracy

compares favorably in performance to government bureaucracies elsewhere.

What were the "reinventing teams"?

teams that were formed under the National Performance Review to analyze and make recommendations about bureaucratic effectiveness

The National Performance Review addressed which of the following issues about the bureaucracy?

responsiveness, accountability, efficiency, and the need to reduce red tape

Which of the following was the most recent broad initiative aimed at making the bureaucracy more responsive?

the National Performance Review

The president can hire about ________ full-time partisan employees to help him or her implement the presidential agenda.

2,000

The typical presidential appointee spends about ________ on the job before leaving for other employment.

two years

In terms of holding the bureaucracy accountable, the MOST important unit within the Executive Office of the President is the

Office of Management and Budget.

Congress oversees the bureaucracy by using

all of these: sunset provisions, the Government Accounting Office, and oversight hearings.

How has the Government Accountability Office’s role changed?

It has moved from a limited role of keeping track of agency spending to also monitoring whether the agency is implementing policies in the way Congress intended.

Legally, the bureaucracy derives general authority for its programs from

acts of Congress.

The courts have tended to support administrators as long as their agencies

can apply a reasonable interpretation of a statute.

The Senior Executive Service was established in ________ and consists of about ________ career civil servants.

1978; 7,000

When an individual believes that he or she was improperly disadvantaged by a bureaucrat’s decision and contests the decision, the dispute is usually handled by

an administrative law judge.

The Senior Executive Service (SES)

is composed of civil employees that can be assigned by the president to any position within the bureaucracy.

An administrative law judge

can gather evidence and take testimony

Which of the following is true of the federal government’s demographic representativeness?

If all employees are taken into account, the federal bureaucracy comes reasonably close to being representative of the nation’s population.

Which group saw the LARGEST percentage increase of GS 13-15 jobs between 1982 and 2011?

women

About three in every five managerial and professional positions in the federal bureaucracy are held by

white males

Bureaucrats tend to follow

their own agency’s point of view