Comparative Public Administration
February 12, 2025
In the previous article, we have already seen what reinsurance brokers are and why they are so important to the reinsurance market. There are a large number of reinsurer companies that only deal with reinsurance brokers. These companies do not provide any direct service to their clients. The number of reinsurance brokers is increasing day […]
Reinforcement theory of motivation was proposed by BF Skinner and his associates. It states that individual’s behaviour is a function of its consequences. It is based on “law of effect”, i.e, individual’s behaviour with positive consequences tends to be repeated, but individual’s behaviour with negative consequences tends not to be repeated. Reinforcement theory of motivation […]
Communication is a process beginning with a sender who encodes the message and passes it through some channel to the receiver who decodes the message. Communication is fruitful if and only if the messages sent by the sender is interpreted with same meaning by the receiver. If any kind of disturbance blocks any step of […]
Anderson & Anderson’s model of change provides a comprehensive coverage of the entire process of change and equally explains the whole process of change as a cyclical process (Anderson and Anderson, 2001, p. 13). This model briefly views change from three perspectives: Content: It analyzes the technical as well as the organizational factors which require […]
Companies all over the world today acknowledge operational risk as a serious threat to the survival of their organizations. This is the reason that they explicitly mention operational risks in their risk policies and make efforts to reduce or eliminate these risks. It is important to note that this was not always the case. Just […]
The role and functions of the Government and the bureaucracy is that which keeps constantly evolving in the wake of developments and changes in and around the world. During our discourse we have seen how the academic discipline of public administration has evolved. It has undergone reforms and has been influenced by developments in other sciences like social and behavioral.
Democracy is a representative form of Government chosen by the people. The entire idea of public administration in a democracy is contradictory. Public administration as described by Frederick Camp Mosher is three steps removed from the people. According to Berkeley and Rouse public service and democracy are both opposing in nature yet complement each other.
In a democratic state, the spirit of democracy needs to be maintained in the manner in which the public services are administered. The public administration of a democratic state needs to be transparent, efficient and most importantly should be open for public scrutiny and criticism. It should ensure scope for incorporation of public opinions and ideas for improvement and delivering better services. It needs to be representing the general interest of a large section of people rather than personal interests of specific few.
In a diverse country like India where the social denominators like caste, religion, language etc pose barriers at so many levels, the public administration should be such that it rises above and transverses all differences.
According to Richard C Box in his book Democracy and Public Administration, there are several important roles that public administration plays in a Democracy, like:
We have read Karl Marx slamming bureaucracy as a government tool created and controlled by the dominant class to cater to their interests. Antonio Gramsci Italian socialist theorists states that bureaucracy is a narrow minded and conservative force and it becomes dangerous when it detaches itself from the mass of members that constitute it and starts functioning as an independent entity.
So if the resources and the power of their distribution lie with the state, the role that bureaucracy has to play can be:
A reader may find these goals to be quite similar to that of a democratic set up and indeed it is. The only difference in a socialist set up is that the government tends to have more and centralized power. Critics have argues that democracy involves planning which means that the freedom and liberties of some will have to be given up for the greater good. However, in the long run, even to achieve socialism, certain level of democracy becomes essential.
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