Deck 1: Approaching the Study of Public Administration

Question 1

The following national government executive departments all reflect the phenomenon of "clientelism" except

A)State.
B)Commerce.
C)Labor.
D)Agriculture.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

The entity with the major responsibility of overseeing the program and management activities of other federal bureaucratic agencies in the national executive branch is the

A)Office of Management and Budget.
B)National Security Council.
C)White House Office.
D)Council of Economic Advisors.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

A president whose patronage practices caused some academics to question their acceptance of the politics-administration dichotomy was

A)Woodrow Wilson.
B)Harry S Truman.
C)Dwight D.Eisenhower.
D)Franklin D.Roosevelt.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Bureaucrats are often thought to be "scapegoats" for societal problems.

Question 5

During its earliest period, a major theme of the academic field of public administration was

A)the search for "principles".
B)the application of sociology and psychology to the field.
C)political neutrality.
D)questioning the connections between public administration and political science.

Question 6

The academic discipline of public administration has been characterized by all the following except

A)the politics-administration dichotomy.
B)the principles approach.
C)empirical methods of research.
D)macro economics.

Question 7

Merit systems apply to approximately _____ proportion of the national government's bureaucratic employees?

A)75 percent
B)45 percent
C)90 percent
D)65 percent

Question 8

What is the acronym popularly used to characterize important administrative principles?

A)POSDCORB, Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, Budgeting
B)FEMA, Federal Emergency Management, Agency
C)POPCORN, Planning, Organizing, Practice, COoperation, Responding, Networking
D)POTDCORB, Patronage, Organizing, Taking responsibility, Direction, Compromising, Reaching out, Budgeting

Question 9

What level of government has the largest number of elected officials?

A)State
B)Federal
C)Local
D)Regional

Question 10

Among the most important differences in the respective working environments of public and private managers are, first, the "goldfish bowl" of publicity facing the public manager and, second, the public manager's

A)ability to control subordinates' careers.
B)ability to employ precise evaluation measures.
C)exclusive power to set agency goals.
D)having to operate under much tighter time constraints.

Question 11

The growth of bureaucracy can be explained by all the following except

A)increasingly complex technology.
B)public pressures.
C)economic crises and natural disasters.
D)divided government.
E)acceptance of regulation.

Question 12

The academic who criticized the "principles" approach to public administration was

A)Frank Goodnow.
B)Herbert Simon.
C)P.W.Willoughby.
D)Alan Altshuler.

Question 13

Which of the following is not an independent regulatory entity?

A)Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
B)General Services Administration (GSA)
C)Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
D)National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

Question 14

The concept of bureaucratic neutrality by definition refers to

A)the rule that members of a bureaucracy are not allowed to have held a previous position in another branch of government.
B)the idea that a bureaucracy should act to implement and serve government directives, but not become a political force in its own right.
C)the idea that bureaucrats should not fraternize with elected officials or private interests.
D)the rule that if one branch should conflict with another in its directives for the bureaucracy, the judicial branch decides which branch's policy the bureaucracy should implement

Question 15

Which of the following does not belong with the others?

A)Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
B)Environmental Protection Agency
C)Amtrak
D)Tennessee Valley Authority

Question 16

A significant example of the public negatively viewing a bureaucracy after a national crisis

A)occurred when the unclear ballots in areas of South Florida impacted the results of the Presidential Election of 2000.
B)occurred in 2004 when the Terry Schiavo case was brought into the public eye.
C)occurred in 2005 with the delayed response to Hurricane Katrina's destruction of the gulf coastal region.
D)All of the above

Question 17

George W.Bush was successful implementing policy changes in which of the following?

A)Social Security
B)Immigration
C)Emergency relief
D)Healthcare
E)None of the above

Question 18

Public managers are likely to face conflicting incentives from all of the following except

A)elected representatives.
B)unionized workers.
C)Citizens.
D)administrative supervisors.

Question 19

The study of public administration is limited to government employees.

Question 20

In Parliamentary forms of government,

A)The legislature is made up of only top-level public administrators.
B)The executive branch makes its own laws that override ones made in the legislature.
C)The officials that parallel our executive branch (the chief executive and top-level ministers) are also influential members of the legislature.
D)There are six different and equally powerful branches.

Question 21

The politics surrounding structural rearrangements within public agencies tend to be very low profile and neutral.

Question 22

Variations in the public's faith in the president are associated with more general feelings of confidence in government.

Question 23

The level of government most involved with the provision of essential public services is the state level.

Question 24

The size of the federal government significantly decreased during the administration of George W.Bush (2001-2009).

Question 25

The phenomenon of administrative discretion (when lower ranking executives are able to personally affect the implementation of law) arises from a lack of centralized authority.

Question 26

Modem bureaucracy has undergone so many changes that all influences from the past have been lost.

Question 27

The larger a unit of local government, the more likely it is that its bureaucracy will resemble state and national administrative agencies.

Question 28

Bureaucratic structures at the local level are generally more prevalent and sophisticated than those at the national level.

Question 29

A challenge faced by only private administrators is that they must pursue broad goals set by others and their efforts will be evaluated by outside forces.

Question 30

Electronic government was originally designed to make citizens more dependent on bureaucratic agencies.

Question 31

Most Americans are NOT affected by the actions and decisions of public administrators on a regular basis.

Question 32

Social-demographic changes in economic activity, population, technology, and the workforce have had little affect on public administration

Question 33

Charles Goodsell maintains that America's public bureaucracies perform quite well in comparison with bureaucracies elsewhere, whether measured by objective standards or in terms of overall citizen satisfaction.

Question 34

Federal efforts to "reinvent government" ignored the role of public employees as frontline service providers.

Question 35

Public employees can be categorized as either "generalists" or "specialists" and also as either "political" or "merit" employees.

Question 36

Public management has virtually nothing in common with private management.

Question 37

"Clientelism," as a distinct political pattern, did not emerge in bureaucratic politics until after World War II.

Question 38

Although public trust in government increased slightly during the 1990s, it is still below the levels of previous decades.