In the American political system, the fourth branch of government refers to a group that influences the three branches of governance defined in the American Constitution (legislative, judicial, and executive). Such groups can include the press (an analogy for the Fourth Estate), the people, and interest groups. U.S. independent administrative government agencies, while technically part of the executive branch (or, in a few cases, the legislative branch) of government, are sometimes referred to as being part of the fourth branch.
In some cases the term is pejorative because such a fourth branch has no official status. The term is also widely used as a picturesque phrase without derogatory intent. Where the use is intended to be pejorative, it can be a rhetorical shorthand to illustrate the user's belief in the illegitimacy of certain types of governmental authority with a concomitant skepticism towards the origin of such authority.
Read more about Fourth Branch Of Government: The Press, The People, Interest Groups, Administrative Agencies, Other "fourth Branches", Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words fourth, branch and/or government:
“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.”
—Frederick Douglass (c.1817–1895)
“True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of variety ... is but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety....”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)