Deck 16: Bureaucracy and the Public Sector

Question 1

Some political systems charge administrators with overseeing the range of policies and their implementation in local or regional settings. The French use the term ____________ for these administrators.

Answer 1

prefect

Question 2

Modern bureaucracy takes many of its qualities from early French and Prussian military systems that wanted to ensure that supplies and distribution of military wares were reliably and effectively provided.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

In early nineteenth-century America, the government bureaucracy was characterized by:

A) efficiency
B) the spoils system
C) honesty
D) hard work
E) high levels of expertize

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Bureaucracies in modern systems have conquered the problem of protected incompetence.

Question 5

On an everyday basis, people in society are more directly affected by decisions made by non-elected, minor administrators or bureaucrats than by the top executive leadership of a country.

Question 6

What conditions prompted bureaucracy reforms in the nineteenth century? What were the five key characteristics of reformed bureaucracy?

Question 7

Which of the following is NOT one of the five characteristics of good public administration?

A) Bureaucrats do not exercise arbitrary power in implementing policies
B) Bureaucrats have flexibility in dealing with special cases
C) There is an honest and accurate reflection of political leaders' decisions in bureaucratic actions and policies
D) Top administrators refrain from giving advice to political leaders
E) Bureaucracies are efficient

Question 8

What are the five characteristics of good public administration? List each and then discuss how well they can be approximated in democratic countries and authoritarian countries.

Question 9

Which of the qualities of an effective bureaucrat would you argue is the MOST important?

Question 10

The civil service in many developed political systems comprise between 10% and 25% of the entire country's labor force.

Question 11

Public administrators as a group are too numerous and individually too unimportant to be controlled effectively.

Question 12

Creating a government official whose primary duty is to seek out citizens' complaints of abuse by public administrators and to remedy those abuses is common in many systems. The office created is called ____________________.

Question 13

In the United States, these people are most likely to serve the role of ombudsman:

A) federal court judges
B) special people appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate
C) members of state and local bureaucracies
D) members of the federal bureaucracy
E) members of Congress

Question 14

Since 1950, the number of civilian public employees in the United States:

A) increased dramatically, primarily at the state and local levels
B) increased dramatically, primarily at the federal level
C) saw no significant change
D) decreased dramatically, primarily at the state and local levels
E) decreased dramatically, primarily at the federal level

Question 15

Your text claims that bureaucracy nurtures flexibility by giving so many players a role in the political process.

Question 16

Those legions of people in government who are responsible for carrying out the implementation of policies are called ____________________________.

Question 17

Your text suggests that the characteristics of effective public administration include: honest, accurate translation of policy decisions; flexibility dealing with special cases; feedback on workability of policies; and from a budget perspective, _______________________.

Question 18

Critical Thinking
Your text raises the notion of a "representative bureaucracy." Presumably at its heart this means that the people fleshing out the bureaucracy would have the demographic characteristics of the general population. Given the challenges and responsibilities of any bureaucracy, is making the bureaucracy more reflective of the general community likely to produce more positive performance by public administrators? Is anything sacrificed in constructing the bureaucracy this way?