Comparative and Development Administration Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Voters is not part of Downs' categorisation of bureaucrats. In Inside Bureaucracy, Anthony Downs divides officials into five types: climbers, conservers, zealots, advocates and statesmen, according to the motives that drive them.

Climbers are officials who seek power, income and prestige. Advocates are officials loyal to a particular programme or agency. Statesmen are officials loyal to the nation as a whole. These three are correct classifications, so they are wrong as answers to a question asking what is not correct.

Answer: A

The phrase developmental bureaucracy was coined by La Palombara, a political scientist who edited Bureaucracy and Political Development (1963) and applied the term to bureaucracies working toward national development.

Fred W. Riggs is wrong because he developed the prismatic and sala models. William Siffin is wrong because he is better known for work on comparative and Thai administration. Edward Weidner is wrong because he is the writer on development administration and not the coiner of the phrase.

Answer: A

The creation of the post of Policy Adviser in each department was suggested by the Fulton Committee. Its 1968 report on the British civil service proposed policy planning units and senior policy advisers in departments to strengthen policy work.

Royal Committee is wrong because it names no specific body. Priestly Committee is wrong because it dealt with civil service pay and conditions. Appleby Committee is wrong because Paul Appleby is the American scholar who reviewed Indian administration in 1953 and 1956.

Answer: B

Both statements are correct, but the reason does not explain the assertion. The United States has no counterpart of the Whitley Councils, the joint negotiating bodies of the British civil service, and it is also a traditional home of the patronage or spoils system.

The first option is wrong because the patronage tradition does not by itself account for the absence of such joint councils, which depends on the American system of employee relations. The options calling a statement false are wrong because both are true.

Answer: B

The foci of research in comparative public administration identified by Ferrel Heady are the modified traditional approach, the development system model, the general system model and middle-range theory, so the answer is (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), option B.

Heady described the field as moving away from the older, purely descriptive study of government institutions towards the study of development, towards the use of general systems ideas, and towards theories of the middle range, which lie between a single case study and a general theory.

The key does not include 'component approach' (i), which is why options A, C and D, each of which includes it, are wrong.

Answer: A

The Hatch Act concerns the political activities of civil servants, so the answer is A.

The Hatch Act of the United States limits the participation of federal employees in partisan politics: they may vote and hold opinions, but they may not take an active part in party campaigns or use their official position to influence elections. (The statute is usually dated 1939, with amendments in 1940, and the year 1919 printed in the question is a slip, though the subject is clear.)

The right to strike (B), the right to form associations (C) and the machinery for negotiation (D) are the subjects of other laws, such as the Taft-Hartley Act and executive orders on federal labour relations.

Answer: A

The key names the performance budget as the budgetary method used in the context of development administration, so the answer is A.

A performance budget presents expenditure by programmes and activities with their targets, and so it links money to the results of development work, which suits development administration. It was recommended for India by the Administrative Reforms Commission and by the Estimates Committee.

A line-item budget (D) controls the objects of spending and does not show achievement, zero-base budgeting (C) is a method of reviewing every item afresh each year, and the block vote system (B) is a method of allocating lump sums to departments.

Answer: B

Planning for the best location of services such as schools, hospitals and banks is spatial planning, so the answer is B.

Spatial planning distributes activities and facilities over an area so that they are placed where they serve the people best, taking account of distance, population and access.

Local planning (A) is planning for a locality and does not address the optimal location of services in this sense. Vertical planning (C) and horizontal planning (D) refer to the levels of planning or to the co-ordination of sectors.

Answer: B

Catastrophe theory has been borrowed from applied mathematics, so the answer is B.

The theory was developed by the French mathematician Rene Thom in the 1960s and 1970s to describe how a small, smooth change in the conditions of a system can produce a sudden and large change in its state. Writers on development administration have used it to explain abrupt breaks in social and administrative systems.

Physics (A) and applied economics (C) have used it, but it did not originate there, and it has no relation to disaster management (D) apart from the sound of its name.

Answer: B

The key credits the view that development administration needs a parallel strengthening of the democratic and representative political process to Lucian Pye, so the answer is B.

Pye, a student of political development, held that administrative growth in new states must be matched by the growth of political institutions, so that the bureaucracy does not overwhelm the weaker representative bodies.

Riggs (A) is associated with the prismatic society model, and La Palombara (C) with bureaucracy and political development, but the key gives the statement to Pye.