BPAC-131 Question paper December 2023

This is a BPAC 131 previous question paper December 2023. You can directly download PDF file of the question paper.

ABOUT BPAC 131 Perspectives on Public Administration

This Course is titled Perspectives on Public Administration. You all need to understand the nature of public administration as an academic discipline. To get a hold of any discipline’s epistemological strength, it should be seen through its various perspectives or approaches. So, this Course assimilates the major approaches to public administration and presents them to you in a lucid manner. Starting from the Classical Approaches to the Neo-Classical and the more Contemporary Approaches of Feminism and Postmodernism, the Course deals with them all.

The first four Units of the Course under Block 1 on Conceptual and Classical Perspectives deal with the meaning, nature and scope of public administration and the diff…

Block 2 of the Course is on Behavioural, Systems, and Socio-Psychological Perspectives. It describes the nature of Behavioural Approaches, which focus on individual needs, group behavior, rational decision-making, organizational design and the environment or context of organizations. Early experiments of Elton Mayo are explained in Unit 5, which also critically appraises the Human Relations Approach for being confined to a few experiments and not looking at the complexity of human behavior. Simon’s value and fact dichotomy in Decision Making is described in Unit 6. It explains the different types of Decision Making such as Programmed, Non-Programmed, Organisational, Personal, Generic and Unique, as well as Routine and Strategic. It also examines the different Models of Decision-Making, which are Simon’s Bounded Rationality Model, Lindblom’s Incremental Model, Etzioni’s Mixed Scanning Model, and Dror’s Optimal Model. The various Theories of Motivation and their connection with organizational outcomes are described in Unit 7. It talks of the organization as a system. The views of Chester Barnard on Closed and Open Systems are discussed. The Unit analyses Medew’s Hierarchy of Needs Approach Douglas Me Gregor’s Theory V and Theory

Block 3 is on Public Policy Perspective. Unit 8 of the Block explains the meaning of Public Policy Approach. It describes the different types of Public Policy Approaches propagated by Harold Lasswell, Herbert Simon, David Easton and Yehezkel Dror. The Unit talks of the different Models of Public Policy. These are Institutional, Rational

Block 4 on Political and Social Perspectives, Units 10 to 14 deal with the environment in which public administration functions. The ‘Ecological Approach’ is Unit 10. Its focus is on studying the ecology of various environments of countries and designing conducive policies thereof. It explains the concept of ecology. It brings out the nature of Agraria and Industria Models that preceded the Riggsian Fused-Prismatic- Diffracted Models. Unit 11 on ‘New Public Administration Approach’ discusses the evolution and phases of public administration to position New Public Administration in its trajectory. The focus is on the outcome of deliberations of all Minnowbrook Conferences and the need for a public-oriented, goal-oriented, change-oriented, and normative administration. Unit 12 on the ‘Public Choice Approach’ describes the concepts of Methodological Individualism, Politics-as-Exchange, Institutional Pluralism, Rational Choice, Rent-Seeking, and Economic Constitutionalism. ‘Public Interest Approach’ is Unit 13 that elaborates on the concept of Public Interest by elucidating the views of different scholars on it. It describes the current and future responsibilities toward Public Interest.

The last block of the course, Contemporary perspectives talks about more recent approaches of New Public Management, Goog governed, postmodernism, and feminism