Comparative and Development Administration Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The smallest unit of rural local government in the UK is the parish.

In rural England the parish council (in Wales the community council) is the lowest tier of local government. It looks after very local matters such as village halls, footpaths, allotments and playing fields, and can be consulted on planning.

The county is the upper tier, responsible for large services such as education and social care over a wide area. The borough is generally an urban unit, a town with a charter, and in two-tier areas a district or borough council sits between the county and the parish. Because the borough is not the smallest rural unit, 'Both (A) and (C)' is also wrong.

Answer: C

All four are elements, so the answer is (1), (2), (3) and (4).

Development administration, as described by Edward Weidner, Fred Riggs and others, is administration directed at bringing about planned change. It is goal oriented, working to achieve defined development objectives; planned, operating through programmes and plans; participatory, involving the people in development rather than treating them as passive recipients; and innovative, willing to experiment with new structures and methods in place of routine.

Each code that leaves out one or two of these (only 1, 2 and 3; only 3 and 4; only 1 and 2) omits a feature that the standard accounts list.

Answer: A

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

Two pairs are certain. France trains its senior civil servants at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), founded in 1945, so (c) goes with (1). India recruits to the all-India and central services through the Union Public Service Commission, so (d) goes with (3).

Only one code has both (c)-(1) and (d)-(3), and it places the Civil Service Commission with the UK, where the Civil Service Commission has supervised recruitment on merit since 1855, and the personnel agency with the USA. The other three codes pair France with something other than the ENA, or India with something other than the UPSC, so they are wrong.

Answer: C

The ecological perspective was introduced primarily through the writings of John Gaus.

John M. Gaus, in Reflections on Public Administration (1947), argued that administration must be studied in relation to its environment: people, place, physical and social technology, wishes and ideas, catastrophe and personality. Fred Riggs later developed the ecological approach in comparative administration.

Robert Golembiewski wrote on organisation behaviour and the paradigms of the discipline, Ferrel Heady on comparative public administration, and Gunnar Myrdal, an economist, on development in South Asia in Asian Drama. None of them introduced the ecological perspective.

Answer: C

The key is C, France. I could not confirm this from a source, so the explanation says what it rests on.

French public administration has a strong tradition of an elite, permanent civil service, trained in the grandes écoles and the École nationale d'administration, that sees itself as the guardian of the State and of continuity across changing governments. Writers such as Ezra Suleiman describe the French bureaucracy's power in these terms, and 'tutelary' (guardian-like) fits that picture.

The USA (A) and the UK (B) are usually described as having bureaucracies under political control. Japan (D) is also known for a powerful bureaucracy, so a reader could choose it. The key is kept because nothing shows it wrong, but 'tutelary' with these four options was not traced to a source.

Answer: C

The one not covered is economic activities.

Riggs's definition, as summarised in course notes, says the scope of development administration covers all areas in which a government carries out programmes to reshape its physical, human and cultural environment, and the effort to enlarge the government's own capacity to carry out such programmes. Physical environment (A), human activities (B) and government capacity (D) correspond to those three parts.

'Economic activities' is not one of the named parts, which is why it is the keyed answer. The summaries are secondary, and other writers (such as Montgomery) do put economic change at the centre of development administration, so this is a reading of Riggs's wording and not a statement that economics is irrelevant to the field.

Answer: A

The model is the communist model.

The communist (Marxist) model of development holds that capitalism exploits the working class and must be replaced by collective ownership of the means of production, so it calls for the overthrow of capitalist economies.

The diffusion approach holds the opposite view: development spreads from advanced capitalist countries to less developed ones through capital, technology and ideas. Human needs centred development focuses on meeting basic needs within existing systems, and the alternative development approach stresses people-centred, participatory and sustainable development rather than the destruction of capitalism.

Answer: C

The one that is not a widely accepted indicator is human security.

The UNDP's Human Development Index, the standard measure, combines three dimensions: a decent standard of living (measured by per capita income), a long and healthy life (life expectancy at birth) and knowledge (education, measured by years of schooling).

Human security, freedom from fear and want, was discussed in the Human Development Report of 1994 but is not one of the index's indicators. Per capita income, life expectancy and education are all used, so they are not the answer.

Answer: C

The golden era of comparative public administration was 1960-1976, as the key dates it.

The Comparative Administration Group (CAG), chaired by Fred Riggs and supported by the Ford Foundation from the early 1960s, produced a wave of research and publications on administration in developing countries, development administration and ecological models. This period of intense activity is often described as the heyday of the comparative movement. After Ford Foundation funding ended in the early 1970s the CAG was merged into the American Society for Public Administration (1973), and interest declined over the next few years.

1920-1940 and 1941-1960 precede the movement, and '1976 to date' covers its decline and later revival.

Answer: D

The approach most associated with Fred Riggs is the ecological approach.

In The Ecology of Public Administration (1961) and Administration in Developing Countries (1964), Riggs argued that administration can only be understood in relation to its environment: the social, economic, political and cultural setting in which it operates. His models of fused, prismatic and diffracted societies, with the 'sala' as the prismatic bureaucracy, apply this ecological approach.

Riggs also used structural-functional analysis to build those models, which makes it a tempting choice, but the approach he stressed and is known for is the ecological one. The systems and behavioural approaches are associated with others, such as Easton and Simon.