Chapter Thirteen

Key Terms:

1.)   Administrative: Law or regulation created or affected by the activities of governmental agencies that make rules and adjudicate cases concerning private rights and obligations and the limits necessary to control such agencies.

2.)   Dependent Regulatory Agency (DRA): Agency charged with regulating an economic activity but housed within an existing cabinet department.

3.)   Deregulation: Policy or process of reducing the national government’s overall regulatory presence.

4.)   Economic Regulation: Regulation of economic activities that focuses on market aspects of industrial behavior, such as rates, quality or quantity of service, and competitive practices in a particular industry or segment of the economy.

5.)   Independent Regulatory Agency (IRA): Agency charged with regulating some private economic activity and structured to be more or less independent of the executive branch departments or the legislative branch or both.

6.)   Interpretative Rules: An agency’s views of the meaning of its regulations or the statutes it administers.

7.)   Ombudsman: Official charged with processing and examining complaints against a bureaucracy.

8.)   Procedural Rule: Requirement for an agency’s organization, procedure, or practice.

9.)   Rule- Making Authority: Quasi-legislative ability to issue formal rules that cover a general class of activities and give specificity to a general legislative statute.

10.) Social Regulation: Concerns the nature and types of goods and services and the social effects of industrial production processes.

11.) Subsidiary Regulation: All regulatory action accompanying Social Security, Medicine, Medicaid, AFDC (now TANF), food stamps, veterans benefits, IRS regulations, and categorical grant program regulations; clientele are state and local governments.

12.) Tort Action: Civil suit seeking monetary damages for harm allegedly done to a plaintiff by a defendant.

13.) Trust: Psychological state of being willing to be vulnerable based on positive expectations of another’s intentions or behavior.

14.)  Whistle-Blower: Public employee who informs on the action of his or her own department or agency when such action is deemed by the individual to be improper, illegal, or unethical.