Reference no: EM133334091
Questions
1. What makes American bureaucracy distinctive?
2. What does it mean to speak of "government by proxy" and why does Congress keep using proxies?
3. What controls does Congress have over the bureaucracy?
4. What does it mean to give the bureaucracy "discretionary authority?" How has Congress delegated more power to the federal bureaucracy?
5. Explain what the competitive service is and the expected service are. Why has there been an increase in the expected service? What did the 1883 Pendleton Act do?
6. How do the personal attributes and political attitudes affect bureaucrats' behavior and how do their political ideologies affect which agencies they tend to work in?
7. How can bureaucrats sabotage their political bosses? How has Congress protected bureaucrats who might go against their political bosses?
8. What are the constraints on what an agency can do? Why do we have such constraints and what effect do these constraints have on agency behavior?
9. Why are iron triangles less common today?
10. Explain the difference between authorization legislation and appropriations. How does Congress use trust funds to pay for some expenses?
11. How does Congress exercise supervision over the bureaucracy? Explain all the different methods of oversight including the powers that Congress has to conduct investigations.
12. What are the five bureaucratic pathologies? Explain why each exists. Why is it so difficult to reform the bureaucracy?
13. Make a list of all the ways that the bureaucracy can sabotage the political appointees and ways that the appointee can deal with such sabotage.
14. Make a list of the reasons why the federal bureaucracy works the way it does.
15. Make a list of his criticisms of the administrative state.
16. He talks about the administrative agencies combining the three powers of government. What does that mean and how does it work?
17. How do bureaucrats overreach their powers?
18. How and why did the power of the administrative state increase in the 1960s and 1970s? What problems did this create?
19. Explain the constitutional problems with the administrative state.