BCS Written Public Administration cheat sheet

Wilson's 1887 essay "The Study of Administration" separates politics from administration and is conventionally treated as the field's founding statement.

Goodnow's Politics and Administration (1900) distinguishes politics as expression of the state will from administration as its execution.

Weber's ideal-type rational-legal authority rests on written rules, defined jurisdiction, hierarchy, and office held as a career, not as property.

Gulick's POSDCORB acronym covers planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting.

Fayol's 14 principles include unity of command, scalar chain, span of control, and subordination of individual to general interest.

Taylor's scientific management applies time-and-motion study and differential piece rates to raise worker productivity.

The Hawthorne studies showed informal groups and social factors shape output more than physical working conditions alone.

Simon's bounded rationality replaces the maximizing economic actor with the satisficing administrator who accepts a good-enough option.

Classical school (Wilson, Taylor, Fayol, Gulick, Urwick) emphasizes structure, hierarchy, efficiency, and formal rules.

Human relations school (Mayo, Roethlisberger, Follett, Barnard) emphasizes informal organization, morale, and participation.

Barnard's "zone of indifference" is the range of orders a subordinate accepts without questioning their authority.

Herbert Simon and the behavioral school critique classical principles as proverbs lacking empirical grounding.

Weber's bureaucracy is an ideal type, an analytical benchmark rather than a description of any actual office.

New Public Management (Hood, Osborne and Gaebler) borrows market mechanisms: competition, contracting out, and performance measurement.

New Public Service (Denhardt and Denhardt) holds that administrators should serve citizens rather than steer or row.

Woodrow Wilson's politics-administration dichotomy was later qualified by writers such as Paul Appleby and Dwight Waldo.

Weber's features: hierarchical authority, written rules, impersonal application, career officials, and documented files.

Merton's "bureaucratic personality" describes rigidity and rule-worship that displace the organization's actual goals.

Selznick's co-optation describes absorbing outside groups into decision-making to defuse opposition.

Crozier's "bureaucratic phenomenon" links rule rigidity to the power of those who control uncertainty.

Blau's studies show informal relations and lateral consultation coexist with formal hierarchy in large organizations.

Michels' iron law of oligarchy holds that any large organization tends toward control by a small leadership group.

Red tape is commonly measured by compliance time and the number of required forms; it is not synonymous with all rules.

Parkinson's law: work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Merit system selection uses competitive examination and qualification; spoils system ties appointment to political loyalty.

The Pendleton Act (1883) created the US Civil Service Commission and extended merit-based appointment.

The Northcote-Trevelyan Report (1854) proposed open competitive examination and a unified career civil service in Britain.

A unified/generalist service recruits by examination into a career hierarchy; a position-class system defines posts by duties and pay grade.

Civil service neutrality means officials serve whichever government is in office and give advice without public partisanship.

Cadre systems (e.g., France's ENA tradition) stress generalist training and internal promotion; specialist systems recruit by technical field.

The Fulton Committee (1968) criticized Britain's amateur generalist tradition and urged professional management training.

Bangladesh's civil service is governed by the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) examination and the Public Servants (Conduct) Rules.

The policy cycle stages: agenda setting, formulation, adoption, implementation, evaluation, and termination.

Kingdon's multiple streams model links problem, policy, and politics streams; a policy window opens when they couple.

Lindblom's incrementalism treats policy as successive limited comparisons with marginal adjustments to the status quo.

The garbage-can model (Cohen, March, Olsen) describes decisions as outcomes of loosely coupled problems, solutions, and participants.

Pressman and Wildavsky's implementation study found that many clearances and actors make policy delivery fail.

Top-down implementation assumes goals set at the top; bottom-up approaches start from street-level discretion.

A cost-benefit analysis discounts future benefits and costs to present value; a positive net present value favors adoption.

Policy evaluation types: formative (process) evaluation improves implementation; summative (impact) evaluation judges results.

Governance refers to the exercise of authority through formal and informal institutions, including non-state actors.

The World Bank's six governance indicators: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, control of corruption.

Good governance attributes commonly listed: participation, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, effectiveness, accountability, rule of law.

Network governance relies on trust, negotiation, and shared resources rather than command hierarchy.

The 'hollowing out of the state' thesis holds that privatization and delegation shift authority upward, downward, and outward.

Participatory governance tools include public hearings, citizen juries, participatory budgeting, and e-government portals.

Multi-level governance describes authority shared across supranational, national, and local tiers.

New public governance (Osborne) emphasizes inter-organizational networks and co-production of services.

Development administration stresses planned change, capacity building, and goal-oriented public action in developing states.

Riggs' prismatic society model uses fused, prismatic, and diffracted types to describe transitional administrative systems.

The 'administrative state' debate concerns whether bureaucrats should make policy choices in addition to executing them.

Public management reforms include performance budgeting, contracting out, total quality management, and e-government.

The 'new public management' toolkit includes performance contracts, service charters, and competitive tendering.

State capacity is often measured by tax-to-GDP ratio, bureaucratic quality, and infrastructure delivery.

The capability approach (Sen) evaluates development by expansion of people's real freedoms rather than income alone.

Results-based management links budgets and accountability to measurable outputs and outcomes.

Ultra vires means action beyond the legal powers conferred by statute; it is a ground of judicial review.

Natural justice comprises the audi alteram partem rule (hear the other side) and nemo judex in causa sua (no bias).

Wednesbury unreasonableness allows review of a decision so absurd that no reasonable authority could have made it.

Legitimate expectation may arise from a promise or established practice and requires fair treatment before departure.

Judicial review examines legality, rationality, and procedural propriety, not the merits of the decision.

Delegated legislation must stay within the enabling act and follow any prescribed consultation and publication steps.

The doctrine of separation of powers underpins review: courts check legality, not policy choice.

Tribunals and ombudsman offices provide alternative remedies alongside the courts.

Accountability has three elements: answerability (explaining conduct), enforceability (sanctions), and responsibility.

Vertical accountability runs through elections to citizens; horizontal accountability runs through oversight bodies.

Public service values commonly listed: integrity, impartiality, objectivity, transparency, honesty, and leadership.

Conflict of interest arises when private interest could improperly influence official judgment; disclosure and recusal are standard remedies.

Whistleblower protection laws shield employees who report wrongdoing from retaliation.

The 'public office is a public trust' maxim underlies codes of conduct and asset declaration requirements.

Corruption types include bribery, nepotism, embezzlement, and conflict-of-interest trading; Transparency International's CPI scores perceived corruption.

Ethical decision frameworks include consequence-based, duty-based, and virtue-based reasoning.

Bangladesh's civil service is regulated by the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) recruitment rules and the Public Servants (Conduct) Rules, 1979.

The Constitution of Bangladesh (1972) provides for a permanent civil service and an independent Public Service Commission.

The Administrative Tribunal and Administrative Appellate Tribunal hear service-related disputes of public servants.

The Bangladesh Public Service Commission conducts BCS examinations and recommends candidates for appointment.

The Local Government (Union Parishad) Act, 2009 governs union-level elected bodies; Upazila Parishad Act, 1998 governs sub-district bodies.

The Ministry of Public Administration oversees civil service management, promotions, and cadre rules.

The National Integrity Strategy (2012) sets out anti-corruption and governance reform commitments.

The Annual Development Programme is the core instrument for public investment planning.

Comparative PA uses case studies and cross-national statistical analysis to explain administrative variation.

Administrative traditions (Anglo-Saxon, Napoleonic, Germanic, Scandinavian, Confucian) differ in law, career, and state-society relations.

The 'Westminster model' features ministerial responsibility, a neutral career service, and parliamentary oversight.

The 'new Weberian state' combines Weberian bureaucracy with performance-oriented reforms.

Digital-era governance (Dunleavy et al.) emphasizes reintegration, needs-based holism, and digitization.

Global administrative law refers to transnational rules and review bodies beyond the nation-state.

Public sector innovation literature studies co-design, experimentation, and scaling of new service models.

The 'whole-of-government' approach coordinates across departments to address cross-cutting problems.

Lewin's change model: unfreezing, moving, and refreezing the organization's behavior.

Kotter's eight steps begin with creating urgency and end with anchoring new approaches in culture.

The 'garbage can' and 'punctuated equilibrium' models explain why reform is episodic rather than continuous.

Administrative reform instruments include reorganization, deregulation, performance pay, and e-government.

The 'policy entrepreneur' inside government brokers reform coalitions and frames problems for decision-makers.

Resistance to change sources include loss of status, uncertainty, and perceived threat to expertise.

Reform evaluation should compare outcomes against baseline measures, not simply count activities completed.

The 'reform cycle' often alternates centralization and decentralization phases in administrative systems.