Comparative and Development Administration Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Heady lists as features of bureaucracy in developing societies: the pattern of administration is imitative, there is a wide gap between form and reality, and the bureaucracy is short of skilled manpower (i, ii and iv).

Statement (iii) is not one of them. In such countries the bureaucracy is typically not under effective control by other legitimate branches of government, so it does not simply accept direction from them. Options with (iii) are wrong.

Answer: D

The key attributes the statement that a bureaucratic structure and its orientation to a development role are not necessarily incompatible to V.A. Pai Panandikar, who wrote on the Indian bureaucracy and its role in development.

Nehru, J.N. Khosla and K.M. Munshi are not credited with this formulation in the key. The remark answers the view that a bureaucracy built for rule-following and law-and-order cannot take on a development role, and it holds that the two can go together.

Answer: D

The statement that communication is only a desirable component of development administration is incorrect. Communication is an essential component, since programmes need information to flow between officials and people, and between levels.

The other statements are correct: suitable institutions must be set up for development goals, administrative capacity and capability must be built, and coordination is a basic component, as many agencies work on the same programmes.

Answer: D

Decision making in development administration is flexible and innovative (i and iv). Development goals involve change and new situations, so rigid, rule-bound methods do not suit them, and officials need room to adapt and to try new ideas.

Centralised and rigid decisions are the marks of routine regulatory administration. They slow action and kill initiative, so the options that include (ii) or (iii) are wrong, and the pair (i) and (iv) is the one that fits.

Answer: A

The statement that is not a feature of Riggs's industrial model is the predominance of ascriptive, particularistic and diffuse patterns. Those mark the agraria (traditional) model, where status, family and personal ties decide roles.

The industria model is achievement-oriented, universalistic and functionally specific. It has a high degree of social mobility, voluntary associations performing specific functions and well-developed occupational systems, so the other statements are features of it.

Answer: C

The grands corps of the French civil service are the elite bodies, such as the Conseil d'Etat and the Corps des Mines, recruited from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration or Polytechnique. Their members are generalist administrators who also have specialised training and move between ministries and posts. The key describes them as the senior level of generalist cum specialist administrators. The other options, specialists alone, generalists alone or defence administrators, do not describe them.

Answer: B

The Fast Stream of the British Civil Service is a talent management programme for graduates who have the potential to be future leaders, and it is open to people from any academic discipline, with several separate schemes. The statement that it is open to both graduates and non-graduates is not correct, since the Fast Stream is a graduate entry route. So the second option is the answer.

Answer: C

F.W. Riggs, in his model of the prismatic society, described overlapping as the extent to which the formally differentiated structures of a diffracted society co-exist with the undifferentiated structures of the fused type. Heterogeneity, formalism and poly-communalism are other features of the prismatic model, but they are defined differently: heterogeneity is the mixing of different systems, and formalism is the gap between the formal rule and real practice. So overlapping is the answer.

Answer: A

Both statements are correct and the reason explains the assertion. Development administration is meant to carry out programmes of development, and for this it needs administrative modernization. The reason states how: new administrative structures have to be created and existing ones reoriented to suit development programmes, which is what administrative modernization means. So the reason is the correct explanation of the assertion.

Answer: C

A member of the Conseil d'Etat in France serves in the ministries as a line administrator (i), advises the government (ii), and adjudicates the cases brought against officers of the State as the supreme administrative court (iii). Statement (iv), that he creates a conflict of interests, is not right in the key's view, because the dual function is held to enrich administrative adjudication. So (i), (ii) and (iii) are correct, which is the third option.