Comparative Public Administration

Public administration is about the government’s policy implementation, managing the establishments of nonprofit organisations. It is also an academic discipline that studies the implementation of government policies and prepares the civil aspirants to work in government and non-government sectors.

Comparative public administration studies various public administrative systems in other nations. In this dynamic society, it is essential to rework and redefine the organisational structures to maintain a sequence in this busy world. Comparative public administration does this in a better way. The father of comparative public administration is FRED RIGGS. He was the pioneer of public administration and also the scientist of politics. He is famous for his model RIGGSIAN model.

Objectives of CPA

Categorising administrative systems is the most crucial objective of comparative public administration; it is necessary to know about the differences and similarities in the different countries. Following are the objectives of CPA listed

• By substituting the previous statements relating to the public administration, the objective is to set up enlightened knowledge
• To develop administration in mind, research of public administration should be expanded
• One of the objectives of CPA is to build a model of general management
• A comparative analysis will be done on the current problems of public administration
• Finding out theories by conducting comparative research relating to public administration in different countries to bring those theories into practice

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Elements of Comparative Public Administration

• Public administration deals with staff like individuals, servants of the public, and others
• For the public administration, one of the commitments includes finances
• An essential role of public administration professionals is to draft acceptable policies for the public
• Administrators of the public should possess a clear and proper understanding to govern the issues

Significance of Comparative Public Administration

• With the help of comparative public administration, researchers, policymakers, administrators, and many others can learn the ups and downs in the different environments of administrative structures
• It will enable the UPSC aspirants to learn which administrative structure is successful in any kind of environment with the help of comparative public administration
• It will assist in building a consistent and valuable political system in different environments and different nations
• It will help in understanding the various strategies for administrative improvement
• It will allow a UPSC aspirant to learn the different groups of systems
• It will enable an analysis of the public administration based on comparatives
• CPA will explain the factors in bureaucratic behaviour responsible for cultural and national differences

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Trends in Comparative Public Administration 

Three trends contribute to CPA

1. Normative to Empirical

Before the world war, there was normative public administration where all the countries adopted specific formulas to make efficient public administration. After the world war, public administration focused more on emphatical reality based on the reality greater importance was given to context instead of normative

2. Ideographic to Nomothetic

Ideographic refers to learning the particular situation and identifying the distinctive feature of that particular situation. At present, there is a greater focus on generalisation rather than identifying the distinctive features. This will help to acknowledge the reality from the conceptual point of view.

3 Non-ecology to Ecology

This trend will concentrate on all the ecological factors like cultural, social, and political factors instead of only focusing on administration factors as it will be challenging to recognize the nature of administration.

Focus of CPA 

• To study the individual roles
• To study the entire system of administration
• To study the system of communication
• To study the interactions in the organisation between the individual personalities
• To study the decision systems and policy systems
• To study the administrative system’s performance
• To study administrative structures formally and informally 

Approaches of CPA

1. Behavioural Approach

This approach deals with the scientific study relating to the behaviour of humans in different social environments. It will replace realistic and empirical judgments with value-oriented judgments. Public administration study should include the individual and collective analysis of human behaviour in administrative situations.

2. Ecological Approach

This approach will include the values of organisational culture, which is moulded in the administration behaviour. This also included the interaction between attributes of administration and values.

3. System Approach

As per this approach, all the subsystems will receive inputs from the large systems in the form of material resources and humans and give out rewards, services, or products to their members as outputs.

4. Bureaucratic Approach

This approach was developed by Max Weber. As per Max Weber, All organisations can be defined as the structure of activities that will later direct towards achieving desired goals. For maximising productivity and efficiency, every organisation will improve its specialisation system and rules and regulations.

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Riggs Model

Fred Riggs is the father of comparative public administration. He has developed an article named agrarian Transitia industria. This model came into existence in 1957. Riggs’s model has been designed to learn about the two nation’s, China and the USA. This model reveals the study of two societies, namely agrarian and industrial societies. Agrarian society has the dominance in agricultural activities whereas industria in industrial activities. 

Transitia society stands in between both societies. It includes the elements of both the agrarian and industrial society, for example, Indian society. Riggs used a structural approach to define this theory.

Structural functional approach:

There are two concepts involved in this approach: structure and function. Functions include the outcome of an action, whereas structure refers to the resulting institutions of the system and the outcome of the action. This approach forms a significant mechanism to analyse various social processes.

Conclusion

We can conclude that comparative public administration is not only the study of public administration, but the study of overall changes in different nations. The various trends have evolved over some time to contribute towards comparative public administration. Various approaches have been designed to study different changes in the CPA.