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 of, fourth, branch and/or government:
“Newsmen believe that news is a tacitly acknowledged fourth branch of the federal system. This is why most news about government sounds as if it were federally mandated—serious, bulky and blandly worthwhile, like a high-fiber diet set in type.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“‘Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)
“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)
“If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)