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Introduction to Public Administration Questions and Answers

Direction for [ Question No: 1 To 2 ] :

Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow based on your understanding of the passage :

The main function of civil service is formulation and implementation of public policy. The civil service engages itself in collection of relevant data and information in order to identify the crux of the problem. The civil service, specially at the secretariat level, is considered as the 'think tank' of the Government and it helps in making sound and effective policies. The civil servants also administer the law of the land. They are to implement and execute the law of the land faithfully and impartially. In finance, the civil servants not only prepare the budget but also influence the taxation and expenditure policy of the government to a great extent. Today they perform quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions also. Public relations has become an important part of their official duties. Therefore, they are expected to explain the Government policy to the people and to win their co-operation in its implementation. In a country like India, civil servants are entrusted the responsibility of implementing various programmes of rural development and welfare measures. Recent decades have seen a shift towards a reduced role for the Government in all countries. Thatcherism in UK and Reaganomics in USA tried to pull out the State from the morass of over-involvement. The decline of Communism in Eastern Europe has furthered the trend towards economic liberalisation and disinvestment in public sector enterprises. India could not have remained unaffected by these global trends.

1.

Which one of the following is not the area of Civil Servants ?

Exam Year(s)

UGC NET - 2012,

Answer: D

According to the passage the civil service collects data, identifies the problem and acts as the think-tank of the government, so these are areas of civil servants. The enactment of law is not in the list: the civil servants administer, implement and execute the law of the land, while enacting laws is the function of the legislature. So 'enactment of law' is the one that is not the area of civil servants. The passage assigns policy formulation, collection of data, identification of the problem and the think-tank function to the civil service, along with administration of the law and the budget.

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Answer: D

The passage says that civil servants administer and execute the law of the land, prepare the budget and explain government policy to the people, and that they perform quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions. It does not say that they carry out judicial activities proper, since judging is the work of the courts. So 'judicial activities' is the one the civil servants are not discharging. Judicial activities proper, such as deciding the guilt of an accused or the validity of a law, belong to the courts, even though administrative tribunals and quasi-judicial bodies decide disputes in administrative matters.

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3.

"Administration is now so vast an area that a philosophy of Administration comes close to being a philosophy of life." Who said this ?

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: D

The words are Marshall E. Dimock's.

Dimock, an American scholar of public administration, argued in A Philosophy of Administration (1958) that administration touches so much of modern life that thinking about how it should be run becomes a way of thinking about how people should live. He stressed values, vitality and the human side of administration rather than technique alone.

Herbert Simon is known for the decision-making approach and his call for a value-free science of administration, L.D. White wrote the first American textbook of public administration (1926), and Vincent Ostrom is associated with the public choice approach and democratic administration. None of them is the author of this line.

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4.

Delegation is a transfer of authority for ...........................

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: D

Delegation is a transfer of authority for routine work.

When a superior delegates, he passes to a subordinate the authority to decide and act on the day-to-day, recurring matters of the organisation, so that his own time is freed for larger questions. Delegation does not mean abdication: the superior remains accountable for what the subordinate does.

Planning, policy making and overall control are the functions the superior keeps for himself. They are what the time saved by delegation is meant for, and handing them down would amount to giving up the office rather than delegating within it.

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5.

It is not a factor of internal coordination :

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: D

The key gives Operational freedom as the item that is not a factor of internal coordination.

Internal coordination is the fitting together of the work of the units and people inside one organisation. It depends on the ability of the superior to lead and integrate, on the skill of subordinates in doing their part, and above all on singleness of purpose, a common goal that every unit works towards.

Operational freedom works the other way: the more each unit is left free to run its own operations, the more it pursues its own line. It is a matter of autonomy and decentralisation rather than a factor that produces coordination, which is why the first three options are the factors and this one is not.

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6.

"Administration is politics since it must be responsive to the public interests," is said by :

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: B

The statement is Paul Appleby's.

Paul H. Appleby, in Big Democracy (1945) and Policy and Administration (1949), attacked the politics-administration dichotomy. Because a public administrator must answer to the public interest and to elected authority, he argued, administration is itself a political process, and policy is made at every level of it.

Woodrow Wilson is the opposite pole: his 1887 essay The Study of Administration set administration apart from politics. Dwight Waldo also criticised the dichotomy, but the line quoted is Appleby's, and Edward Weidner is known for development administration rather than for this debate.

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7.

New Public Administration emphasizes on :

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: C

New Public Administration emphasises participatory processes.

The movement grew out of the Minnowbrook Conference of 1968, sponsored by Dwight Waldo. Its themes were relevance, social equity, values, change and client focus, and it called for citizens and lower-level employees to take part in decision-making instead of leaving it to the top of the hierarchy.

The other options are what it rejected. It turned away from the classical stress on formal structure and from bureaucratic authority, and it explicitly denied that administration could be value-free, insisting that administrators must be committed to equity.

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8.

Match List I with List II and select the correct answer from the codes given below :

List IList II
(a) New Public Administration(1) Edward Weidner
(b) Development Administration(2) Robert Dahl
(c) Comparative Administration(3) Dwight Waldo
(d) Administrative Development(4) F.W. Riggs

Codes :

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: A

The code is a-3, b-1, c-4, d-2.

  • New Public Administration is linked with Dwight Waldo, who sponsored the 1968 Minnowbrook Conference where it took shape.
  • Development administration is linked with Edward Weidner, who did much to define it as administration oriented to development goals.
  • Comparative administration is linked with F.W. Riggs, who chaired the Comparative Administration Group from 1960.

Option A is the only code that puts Waldo against New Public Administration, so the remaining pair, Robert Dahl with administrative development, follows. Options B, C and D give New Public Administration to Riggs, Weidner or Dahl, which is wrong.

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9.

In which of the following is not common in public and private administrations ?

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: C

What is not common to the two is scope and complexity.

Writers such as Fayol and Urwick held that administration is one, because the same techniques are used wherever work is organised. Filing, accounting and managerial techniques are therefore shared by government offices and private firms.

The difference lies in breadth. Paul Appleby stressed that government has a far wider scope, touches every citizen, and works under public accountability and political direction, so its work is larger and more complex than any private enterprise. The three other options are among the common features, so they are not the answer.

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10.

Integral view of Public Administration does not include :

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2019, SET Exam - 2019,

Answer: D

The integral view does not include mechanical activities.

The integral view of public administration holds that administration is the sum of all the activities carried out to achieve the purpose of an organisation: managerial, technical, clerical and manual work alike. Writers such as L. D. White took this view, as against the managerial view of Simon, Smithburg and Thompson, which limits administration to the managerial work of planning, organising, directing and controlling.

Managerial, technical and clerical activities are all named in the standard statement of the integral view, so they are included. The textbook list ends with manual activities; mechanical activities is not one of the categories it names, which is why the key marks it as the odd one out.

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