State, Politics and Development Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The iron law of oligarchy was proposed by Robert Michels.

In Political Parties (1911), Michels studied the German Social Democratic Party, a party committed to democracy, and found that it was run by a small leadership. He concluded that every large organisation, however democratic its aims, tends towards rule by a few, because of the need for specialised leaders, the leaders' control of information and resources, and the apathy of the members. 'Who says organisation, says oligarchy.'

Weber, Michels's teacher, wrote on bureaucracy and authority, Marx on class rule, and Merton on bureaucratic personality and functions, but the iron law is Michels's.

Answer: D

The odd one out is Shelter for all.

The eight Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000 for 2015 were: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development.

Poverty eradication, child mortality and universal primary education are therefore goals. Shelter for all is a separate slogan, associated with the UN-Habitat agenda (the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000), and is not one of the MDGs; slum improvement appears only as a target under the environmental sustainability goal.

Answer: B

This view is called gender mainstreaming.

Gender mainstreaming, endorsed at the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), means assessing the implications for women and men of every planned action, including legislation, policies and programmes, in all areas and at all levels, so that gender concerns become an integral part of design, implementation and evaluation rather than a separate add-on.

Gender justice and gender equality are goals rather than the strategy described. Gender budgeting is one specific tool within mainstreaming: analysing government budgets for their effect on women and men.

Answer: D

The approach is Gender and Development (GAD).

GAD, which emerged in the 1980s, shifted attention from 'women' to gender relations. It examines how women's reproductive and productive roles are bound up with unequal relations between men and women, and argues that development must change those power relations, not just add women to existing projects.

The welfare approach treated women mainly as mothers and recipients of aid. Women in Development (WID) sought to integrate women into development through economic participation without questioning gender relations. The efficiency approach justified investing in women because it makes development more efficient. None of these links reproduction and economic roles to gender inequality as GAD does.

Answer: D

The key's answer is millennium movement, that is, a millenarian movement.

Millenarian movements expect an imminent, total transformation of the world, a golden age brought about by supernatural intervention, and they fuse religious and spiritual belief with protest against social and economic conditions. Cargo cults in Melanesia, the Ghost Dance among Native Americans and the Birsa Munda movement in India are often analysed this way, since each combined prophecy and religious revival with resistance to colonial and economic domination.

Reform movements seek limited change within the existing order, and 'alternative' and 'transformative' are categories from David Aberle's classification of movements by the extent and target of change, not terms for the blending of spiritual and social issues.

Answer: C

The Gandhian idea of development centres on trusteeship.

Gandhi held that those who own wealth should regard themselves as trustees, holding it on behalf of society and using it for the common good, while keeping only what they need. Trusteeship was meant as a non-violent alternative to both capitalism, with its unrestricted private ownership, and state socialism, with its concentration of power in the state.

So private ownership and government ownership are the very models he wanted to transcend. Community ownership is close in spirit to his village ideal, but the specific doctrine he proposed for property and development is trusteeship.

Answer: A

The key's answer is broad acceptance of dominant norms.

For Michel Foucault, governmentality is the 'conduct of conduct': the techniques and rationalities through which populations are governed not mainly by force or law but by shaping how people think and behave, so that they come to regulate themselves according to dominant norms of health, productivity and normality. Governing works through the willing adoption of these norms by the governed.

Totalitarian mentality and dictatorship describe coercive rule, which is the opposite of the dispersed, self-regulating power Foucault meant. 'Power through knowledge' recalls his separate idea of power/knowledge; governmentality uses such knowledge, but the question asks what governmentality refers to, and the key takes the normalising effect on conduct.

Answer: A

Welfare decommodification means welfare is provided publicly notwithstanding one's income or resources.

Gosta Esping-Andersen, in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), defined decommodification as the degree to which individuals can maintain a livelihood without reliance on the market, that is, without having to sell their labour. Rights to benefits and services provided as a matter of citizenship, regardless of means, decommodify labour; the social democratic welfare states of Scandinavia score highest.

Benefits based on one's income and resources describe means-tested provision, typical of liberal welfare regimes and low on decommodification. Provision through market-like goods is commodification itself. Social stability, family and loyalty to the state are aims associated with the conservative-corporatist regime.

Answer: B

Power exercised through force or the threat of force is coercion.

Weber distinguished power, the chance of realising one's will even against resistance, from authority, power that is accepted as legitimate by those subject to it. Where people comply because they are forced or threatened rather than because they accept the right to command, power takes the form of coercion.

Authority is therefore the opposite case. Terrorism is a particular form of political violence aimed at creating fear, and vandalism is deliberate damage to property; neither is the general term for power based on force.

Answer: C

The level of urbanization is not an indicator of the Human Development Index.

The HDI, published by the UNDP since 1990, averages three dimensions: a long and healthy life, measured by life expectancy at birth; knowledge, measured by mean and expected years of schooling; and a decent standard of living, measured by gross national income per capita.

So life expectancy, education and per capita income are all inputs to the index. Urbanization is often associated with development, but it is not one of the HDI's components, and a highly urbanised country can still score poorly on health and education.