UPSC IAS Mains Public Administration Solved Exam Paper - 2013 (Paper -I)
UPSC IAS Mains Public Administration Solved Exam Paper - 2013
Paper - I
Q.1. Answer the following questions in not more than 150 words each: 10x5=50
(a) How did traditional public administration ''resolve a fundamentally irresolvable problem-creating an administration strong enough to be effective but not so strong enough to endanger accountability''? 10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(b) The theory of 'organizational incompetence' has two separate and distinct faces. Examine Chris Argyris' views on this. 10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(c) ''In the globalized public administration, hierarchy creates more ethical problems than it solves...''Comment. 10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(d) Public Administration in the neo-liberal era is governed less by instruments of internal accountability and more by those of external accountability. Elaborate. 10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(e) Discuss the view that ''tribunals should have the same degree of independence from the executive as that enjoyed by the Supreme Court and the High Courts, especially for those tribunals that look over the functions of High Courts.''10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
Q.2.
(a) "New Public Management may have neither been the saviour its enthusiasts promised nor the devil its critics worried it would be." Discuss. 25 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(b) "The design of the physical structure, the anatomy of the organization
came first, and was indeed the principal consideration." "An organization
is a system of interrelated social behaviours of participants."
Analyse these statements and evaluate the contributions of the respective
approaches to administration theory. 25
(for
Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
Q.3.
(a) "Decisions are not made by 'organizations', but by 'human beings' behaving as members of organizations." How do Bernard and Simon conceptualize the relation between the decisions of the individual employee and the organizational authority? 20 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(b)"A variety of different organizational arrangements can be used to provide different public goods and services." Explain the theory underlying this proposition and its potential contribution. 15 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(c) What is the nature of psychological contract pursued by organizational management through authority and the employees through exertion of upward influence? 15 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
Q.4.
(a) Structural theory is, by and large, grounded in classical principles of efficiency, effectiveness and productivity. Explain. 25
(b) "Public interest is still inadequate as a ground concept to evaluate public "policy." Discuss. 25
Answer:
(a) Structural theory is, by and large, grounded in classical principles of efficiency, effectiveness and productivity. Explain. 25
Structural theory relates to a rigid structure of the organization which is needed for effective and efficient management of an organization. It is inherent in the writing of classical thinkers like Fayol, Taylor, Gulick and Urwick, Mooney and Reiley and Weber.
Woodrow Wilson in his famous essay “The study of Administration” propounded scientific management ,it is based on the concept of planning of work to achieve efficiency, standardization, specialization and simplification. The approach to increased productivity is through mutual trust between management and workers.
Fayol in The elements of administrative theory relate to accomplishment of tasks, and include principles of management, the concept of line and staff, committees and functions of management. Fayol considered management as a set of planning, organizing, training, commanding and coordinating functions.
Gulick and Urwick further developed the structural system. They provided principles for structure of Administration. Gulick and Urwick (1937) also considered organization in terms of management functions such as planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting.
Mooney and Reiley’s principles of coordination, scalar process, functional differentiation and line and staff are again based on those classical principles.
Considering the organization as a segment of broader society, Weber (1947) based the concept of the formal organization on :
- structure;
- specialization;
- predictability and stability;
- rationality; and
- democracy.
Weber's theory is infirm on account of dysfunctions such as rigidity, impersonality, displacement of objectives, limitation of categorization, self-perpetuation and empire building, cost of controls, and anxiety to improve status.
Follett and Bernard deviated from the idea of economic man and shifted their focus on the significance of socio-psychological aspects of organizational behavior but Follett’s principles of planning and coordination and Bernard’s principles of better communication have clearly been put forward with a view of increasing the efficiency, effectiveness and productivity of an organization.
(b) "Public interest is still inadequate as a ground concept to evaluate public "policy." Discuss. 25
Public interest, is the welfare or well-being of the general public; or appeal or relevance to the general populace. The public interest must be assessed impartially and, therefore, defines the public interest as the "ex ante welfare of the representative individual."
Under a thought experiment, by assuming that there is an equal chance for one to be anyone in society and, thus, could benefit or suffer from a change, the public interest is by definition enhanced whenever that change is preferred to the status quo ex ante. This approach is "ex ante", in the sense that the change is not evaluated after the fact but assessed before the fact without knowing whether one would actually benefit or suffer from it.
The approach can be traced to John Stuart Mill, who, in his letter to George Grote, explained that "human happiness, even one's own, is in general more successfully pursued by acting on general rules, than by measuring the consequences of each act; and this is still more the case with the general happiness, since any other plan would not only leave everybody uncertain what to expect, but would involve perpetual quarrelling..."
Applying a detailed definition is likely to result in unintended consequences, in Acting in the Public Interest. Instead, each circumstance needs to be assessed based on criteria such as the relevant public, wants, and constraints. The key to assessing any public interest decision is transparency of the decision-making process, including balancing competing interests.
There has been great number of theories of public interest like utilitarianism, elitism, intuitionism, social justice etc. these are mutually conflicting, and one executive action can be justified on basis of one and condemned on basis of other. With the coming up of LPG and international obligations, public policy has to take into account various other external international factors too rather than just citizens and state issues. It is therefore suggested that the public interest framework may not be sound as a ground theory to evaluate public policy.
SECTION B
Q.5. Answer the following questions in not more than 150 words each: 10x5=50
(a) "Comparative Public Administration both resembles and differs from modern organization theory." Elaborate. 10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(b) "In organizational analysis there is always gender around." (Gouldner). Argue 10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(c) What is administrative elitism? How does it evolve in public administration? Elaborate your response with reference to historical examples. 10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(d) The success rate of e-government projects in most developing countries is stated to be rather low. Assess the reason. 10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(e) What new models of budgetary capacity and incapacity have emerged after the decline of Planning Programming Budgeting and Zero-based Budgeting? 10 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
Q.6.
(a) "For those who use the euphemism of 'shared power' for
participation, the appropriate literature for guidance is practical politics,
not organization and management."
"Strong state and strong civil society are the need to develop both
participatory democracy and responsive government as mutually reinforcing and
supportive." Bring out the myths and realities associated with public
participation. 20
(for
Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(b) "..... in most cases .... newly independent states, of the nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America, despite their differences .... are in transition." 15 (Ferrel Heady). What common features are indicative of characteristics of their administrative patterns (cultures)? 15 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(c) "To talk about the regulatory framework is to talk about governance." Analyse the statement in the context of public-private-partnerships and identify the elements of regulation. 15 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
Q7.
(a) “Economic reforms are a work in progress with the state reluctant to fully relinquish its reins.”Discuss the statement with regard to implementation of economic reforms in India. 15 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(b) “The policy process was not structured in the way required by
bureaucratic planning.”
“Arguably, incrementalism now stands most in contrast to neo-liberal nationality
that impose markets against both gradual change and democratic liberalism.”
Analyse these two statements. 20
(for
Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(c) Budget allocation involves series of tensions between actors with different backgrounds, orientations and interests and between short-term goals and long term institutional requirements. Discuss. 15 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
Q8.
(a) Read the following instances carefully and suggest what specific perspectives on organizational psychology of motivation would help the concerned organization to reconcile the needs of the following four persons with the needs of the organization: 30 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)
(i) Mr. A comes to his office with clocklike punctuality; does his work with impeccable honesty and integrity; takes order from above gladly; responds well to overtures by peers; but neither mixes with anyone himself nor seeks anyone's company. What is more, he seems quite happy in his isolation.
(ii) Mr. B is an efficient charge-hand at the welding shop. He is very outgoing and makes friends fast , but falls out with them very fast too. He is however easily pacified when anyone asks him to calm down in the name of the organization.
(iii) Dr. C is completely happy and absorbed when he is teaching in the classes, and does not at all mind when his workload gets heavier and covers new areas. But he gets angry when the finance section raises objections about his medical bills; and is furious that the higher administration is yet to give him full tenure.
(iv) Mr. D is a metallurgist in the forge shop of the steel plant, and has received honours for his innovativeness in modifying conventional alloys. He also paints well and values his painting skills far more than his metallurgy and is extremely unhappy that the company house journal did not finally carry his water sketch on its front cover.
(b) Suppose the Government of India is thinking of constructing a dam in a mountain valley girded by forests and inhabited by ethnic communities. What rational techniques of policy analysis should it resort to for coping with likely uncertainties and unforeseen contingencies? 20 (for Answer Join Public Administration Online Coaching)