Mr Wexler's AP Gov Ch. 13 Bureaucracy Key Terms
Terms
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- Bureaucracy
- a large, complex organization composed of appointed officials
- Spoils System
- the practice of giving the fruits of a party’s victory to loyal members of that party
- Laissez-faire
- a freely competitive economy
- Discretionary authority
- the ability to choose courses or action and to make policies that are not spelled out in advance by laws.
- Competitive Service
- appointments only after a written examination has been administered by the Office of Personnel Management or met certain selection criteria devised by the hiring agency and approved by the OPM.
- Name-request Job
- one that is filled by a person whom an agency has already identified
- Iron Triangle
- the relationship among an agency, a committee, and an interest group
- Issue Network
- people in Washington-based interest groups, on congressional staffs, in universities and think tanks, and in the mass media who regularly debate government policy on a certain subject.
- Authorization Legislation
- originates in a legislative committee and states the maximum amount of money that an agency may spend on a given program.
- Appropriation
- money formally set aside for a specific use
- Trust Funds
- operate outside the regular government budget, and the appropriations committees have no control over these expenditures.
- Annual Authorizations
- Every year the legislative committees, as part of the reauthorization process, get to set limits on what these agencies can spend
- Committee Clearance
- the right to pass on certain agency decisions
- Legislative veto
- a requirement that an executive decision must lie before Congress for a specified period
- Red Tape
- complex rules and procedures that must be followed to get something done