Comparative and Development Administration Questions and Answers

Answer: D

All four factors led to the systematic study of comparative public administration in the United States: new developments in science and technology, the emergence of many new nations after the Second World War, the dissatisfaction of scholars with the culture-bound traditional public administration, and the wish to make the subject an independent discipline.

The options that include only some of the four are incomplete, so the fourth option, (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv), is correct.

Answer: C

The trends not associated with comparative public administration are (iii), prismatic to fused, and (iv), traditional to structural-functional. The recognised trends are from normative to empirical, from ideographic to nomothetic and from non-ecological to ecological.

Statement (iii) is the wrong way round, since Riggs' models of societies run from fused to prismatic, and statement (iv) is not one of the stated trends of the field. The options that include (i) or (ii) wrongly count a true trend as unassociated, so the third option is correct.

Answer: D

In the United Kingdom the law passed by Parliament cannot be declared unconstitutional by the judiciary, since Parliament is sovereign and the United Kingdom has no written constitution above it.

In the United States and in India the courts have the power of judicial review, and can strike down laws that violate the Constitution. So India and the U.S.A. are excluded and the fourth option, U.K. only, is correct.

Answer: C

The statement that growth is the result of human efforts is attributed to W.A. Lewis, the development economist who wrote 'The Theory of Economic Growth' and who held that human effort, and not mere resources, produces growth. This is the keyed answer.

J.N. Khosla wrote on development administration in India, Merle Fainsod on Soviet administration and public policy, and Irving Swerdlow on development administration. So the third option is correct.

Answer: C

Ira Sharkansky's three characteristics of bureaucracies in more developed countries are that they are large and have many sub-units with specialised employees (i), that they accept directions from other legitimate branches of government (ii), and that they are professional, which is a sign of specialisation among bureaucrats (iii).

Statement (iv), a widespread discrepancy between form and reality, is a characteristic of bureaucracies in less developed countries, as described by Riggs. So the third option is correct.

Answer: A

Predominance of universalistic, specific and achievement norms is not a feature of Riggs' agraria model. These are the norms of the industria model, whereas agraria has particularistic, diffuse and ascriptive norms.

The other features, stable local groups with limited spatial mobility, a deferential stratification system of diffuse impact, and relatively simple and stable occupational differentiation, are all features of agraria. So the first option is the answer.

Answer: B

The UNDP framework to measure the comparative ability of States to provide for the well-being of citizens is the Human Development Index (HDI). It combines life expectancy, education and per capita income, and ranks countries by human development.

The Millennium Development Goals were a set of targets adopted by the United Nations for the years up to 2015, not an index of this sort, and Human Development Goals is not a name for the framework. So the second option is correct.

Answer: C

The co-existence of the formally differentiated structure of a diffracted society with the undifferentiated structure of a fused society is described by Riggs as overlapping.

In his prismatic model, the prismatic society has three features: heterogeneity, formalism and overlapping. Overlapping is the feature in which the formal, differentiated structures of the diffracted type exist side by side with the undifferentiated ones of the fused type. Heterogeneity is the mixing of different systems, and formalism is the gap between norms and reality. Poly-communalism belongs to the account of the prismatic society, but does not describe this co-existence.

Answer: D

Comparative public administration emphasises that organizations are embedded in specific cultures and political settings, that the study and practice of administration are value-loaded, and that the principles of public administration are inadequate. That is the code (i), (ii) and (iii).

The fourth statement, on complementary micro and macro aspects of a discipline, is not given as a point of the comparative emphasis in the key, so the codes containing (iv) are rejected.

Answer: C

All four statements are correct, so the code is (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv). The Comparative Administration Group was established in 1963 in the United States, it was funded at first by the Ford Foundation, and it was chaired at first by Fred W. Riggs.

Each of the other codes leaves out one or more of these facts, and so is incomplete. The group was an American body of scholars working on comparative public administration, and Riggs was its first chairman. It sponsored research and publications in the 1960s, so all four facts in the statements are consistent with this record.