POS 2041 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Bureaucracy, Red Tape, Advocacy Group

• School: University of Florida
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POS 2041
• Professor: Beth Ann Rosenson

Document Summary

Political players: parties: majority party, house: speaker, majority leader and minority leader, whips, senate: majority leader, procedures, rules play bigger role in house (senate is less formal) Standing committees (19 in house, 17 in senate). Select committees, joint committees, conference committees: committee chair, two types of government workers, career civil servants, political appointees, classic definition of bureaucracy. Max weber: fixed jurisdictional areas, hierarchy of authority, written documents and general rules, expertise, main problems with bureaucracies, accountability not elected, expansionary tendencies, bureaucratic discretion, one issue: americans want bureaucracy to achieve sometimes conflicting goals: Accountability, equity, responsiveness, efficiency, fiscal integrity: defense of bureaucrats (cid:862)red tape(cid:863) meaning words, procedures, obstacles to getting things done. * i(cid:374)terest group (cid:862)(cid:272)apture(cid:863) (cid:894)cab(cid:895: congressional dominance theory (congress has power over budget, oversight hearings, presidents (appoint heads of bureaucracies) Wilson- emphasizes professional training, also external interests that the bureaucracy regulates. Functions of media: socialization, reporting the news.