MPA (Masters in Public Administration) Yearly Subjects and Syllabus of the Subjects of First Year and Second Year

Following are the subjects to be read in MPA 1st Year (Private Only)

1. PA 510 Fundamentals of Public Administration FM 100 PM 40

2. PA 520 Development Management FM 100 PM 40

3. PA 530 Public Policy FM 100 PM 40

4. PA 540 Research Methods in Public Administration FM 50 PM 20

5. PA 550 Human Resource Management FM 50 PM 20

6. PA 560 Organisation Behavior FM 50 PM 20

7. PA 570 Local Self Governance FM 50 PM 20

These are the Subjects in MPA 2nd Year:

Faculty Subject FM PM

M.P.A. 2nd Year (New Course) PA 610 Research Methods in Public Administration II 50 20

M.P.A. 2nd Year (New Course) PA 620 Global Governance 50 20

M.P.A. 2nd Year (New Course) PA 630 Contemporary Issues in Public Affairs Management 50 20

M.P.A. 2nd Year (New Course) PA 640 Public Finance 50 20

M.P.A. 2nd Year (New Course) PA- 650 Administrative System in Nepal 50 20

M.P.A. 2nd Year (New Course) PA 660 Public Enterprise Management 50 20

Other then these there are two elective subjects of 200 marks:

One of the Specialization Subject is Given below:

M.P.A. 2nd Year HRM 631 Human Resource Development 100 40

M.P.A. 2nd Year HRM 632 Personnel Administration in Nepal & SAARC Countries 100 40

Also, the Research work of 50 Marks is to be done which is of 10 marks in  PA 540 Research Methods in Public Administration (writing a research proposal of 10 marks), and 20/20 marks 2 field work of the specialization subjects.

Syllabus of the subjects are given below:

1. PA 510 Fundamentals of Public Administration Syllabus

1. The Practice and Discipline of Public Administration (15 Lecture Hours)

1.1 Public in Public Administration (Means Government)

"-To be seen along with it is the ‘Public’ aspect of Public administration, which attributes a special character and focus to it. ‘Public’ can be looked at formally to mean ‘government’. So, public administration is government administration, government in action, or a socio-economic and politico-administrative confluence, the focus being especially on public bureaucracy. Encyclopaedia Britannica defines public administration as ‘the application of a policy of a state through its government."

1.2 The Distinctive Characteristics of Public administration

"Public administrators perform a wide range of functions, including managing city budgets, developing policy and legislation, implementing policies, and analyzing data to determine public needs. These functions provide for the well-being of citizens. Public Administration is the responsibility of governmental agencies.

10 Characteristics of Public Administration:

There are included the top ten characteristics of public administration in an organization. Such as:-

1. Responsiveness

2. Structural Changes in Administration

3. Client Centricity

4. Multi-disciplinary Nature of Public Administration

5. Awareness

6. Politics-Administration Dichotomy

7. Structure Change

8. Case Studies

9. Change

10. Jack of All Trades"

1.3 Managerial, Political and Legal Approaches to Public Administration

"Public administration involves a number of complex concerns and functions. It is not surprising, therefore, that as an academic discipline or theory, public administration lacks coherence. 

Some scholars view it as a managerial endeavor, similar to practices in the private sector. Others emphasize its political aspects. Still others view it as a distinctively legal discipline, noting the importance of constitutions and regulations in public administration. 

Those who define public administration in managerial terms view public administration essentially the same as a big business. They believe that public administration ought to be run according to the same managerial principles. They promote the bureaucratic organizational structure of public administration. Bureaucracy requires a highly specialized division of labor which enables each worker to become an expert at what he or she does. Then, specialization requires coordination and hierarchy, that creates a chain of authority to manage and coordinate the work. Data are gathered and statistically analyzed. The selection of public servants is recommended to be based according to their efficiency and performance. They believe that public employees should be prohibited from taking an active part in politics as “administrative questions are not political questions”, and to become businesslike they have to become nonpolitical Law is deemphasized by them: as Leonard White (1923) stressed, “the study of administration should start from the base of management rather than the foundation of law”. The adherents of the managerial approach believe that in making decisions public administrators are to choose most cost-effective. They also tend to minimize the distinction between public and private administration. 

Yet public administration differs from private administration in many significant ways, such as: 

1. Separation of powers, that is their division into chief executives, legislature, and courts, helps to avoid different political pressures and save people from autocracy. At the same time it may frustrate coordination between the branches of powers that often creates a very complex environment for contemporary public administration. This situation is not observed in the private sector. 

2. Constitutional concerns frequently run counter the values of private management. 

3. The profit motive is not central to the public sector. The governmental obligation to promote the public interest distinguishes public administration from private administration and management. 

4. Public agencies do not face free, competitive markets in which their services are done. This remoteness makes it difficult to evaluate the efficiency of public administrators. If government agencies manufacture a product that is not sold freely in open markets, then it is hard to determine what the product is worth. 

5. The actions of public administrators have the force of law while the private sector must turn the public sector's courts and police power for the enforcement of contracts. 

Public administration is also view as an issue in political theory and then it places a different set of values: representativeness, political responsiveness, and accountability of elected officials to the citizens 

The adherents of this approach stress political pluralism within public administration. "

2. Public administration’s Century (15 Lecture Hours)

2.1 Politics/ Administration Dichotomy

2.2 The Principles of Administration

2.3 Public Administration as Political science

2.4 Public Administration as Management

2.5 Public Administration as Public Administration

3. Core Functions of Public administration (15 Lecture Hours)

3.1 Organization Structure and Processes

3.2 Organizations and Organization Theory(Bureaucracy/ Scientific Management/ The Human Relations Approach/ Contemporary Approaches)

3.3 Public Personnel Administration: Basic Functions

3.4 Budgeting and Finance: Basic Functions

3.5 Decision Making: Approaches to Decision Making

4. Administrative Tools (Lecture Hours 20 Hours)

4.1 System approach

4.2 Participatory approach

4.3 Contingency approach

4.4 Ecological approach

4.5 Management by exception

4.6 Result oriented management

4.7 Crisis management

5. The Convergence of Management, Politics and Law in the Public Sector (20 Lecture Hours)

5.1 Policy Evaluation and Implementation Evaluation

5.2 Public Administrative Law

5.2.1 Concept and scope of Administrative Law

5.2.2 Separation of power and its role on public Administration

5.2.3 Delegated legislation

5.2.4 Administrative Tribunals for grievance redressal

6. Public Administration and Globalization (15 Lecture Hours)

6.1 Public Administration and Post-modernism

6.2 Public Administration in a Multicultural Environment

6.3 Role of Public administration in Globalization

6.4 The Governance Agenda

3. Public Policy

Course Title: Public Policy

Course No: PA 530

Nature of the Course: Core

Duration of Course: 100 Lecture hrs.

Full Marks: 100

Pass Marks: 40

Course Objective

The objective of the course is to provide the students with the generic, conceptual, methodological and analytical knowledge and skills appropriate for analyzing issue-areas of public policy in the changed context of national and international environment. The course will emphasis on familiarizing the students with a number of approaches, methods and analytical techniques public policy making addressing the complex, interdependent and multidisciplinary nature of contemporary policy problems. After completing its study, the students are expected to be capable enough to analyze, plan, and manage different aspects of public policy making process.

Course Contents

1. An Introduction to Public Policy (20 Lecture Hours)

1.1 Meaning and concept of public policy

1.2 Public Policy typology ( सार्बजनिक नीतिको वर्गीकरण प्रणाली )

1.2.1 Distributive Policy

1.2.2 Regulatory Policy

1.2.3 Redistributive Policy

1.2.4 Constituent Policy

1.3 Subject matters of public policy/Public Policy Analysis

1.4 Methods of the study of policy-making process

1.5 Nature and scope of public policy

1.6 Purposes of the study of the public policy

2. Theories of Policy Making (10 Lecture Hours)

2.1 Political System Theory

2.2 Group Theory

2.3 Elite Theory

2.4 Intuitional Theory

3. Agenda setting and policy Life cycles (10 Lecture Hours)

3.1 Social construction of problems

3.2 Role of power in defining or defying problems

3.3 Role of ideas, individuals and think tanks in identifying policy issues

3.4 Rationale of Agenda Setting

3.5 Role of state and non-state actors in policy making

3.6 Factors influencing policy making process

3.7 Policy Life Cycle

4. Models of decision making (10 Lecture Hours)

4.1 Key theories associated with decision making, including rational choice theory, incrementalism, Mixed-Scanning, Public Opinion Theory

5 The Implementation of Public Policy (10 Lecture Hours)

5.1 Approaches to policy implementation: Top down, Bottom up, Synthesis of both top down and bottom up and Policy Action Model

5.2 Requirements of effective implementation

6. Monitoring and Evaluation of Public Policy (10 Lecture Hours)

6.1 Monitoring and evaluation concepts

6.2 Criteria for evaluation

6.3 Techniques of evaluation

6.4 Problems in evaluation

6.5 Policy impacts: Change or continuity of policy

7 Policy Transfer and International Lesson Drawing (5 Lecture Hours)

7.1 Concept of policy transfer and lesson drawing

7.2 Forms of Policy Transfer

7.3 Agents of Policy Transfer

7.4 Barriers to Policy Transfer

8 A Case Study on any Policy Issue in Nepal (5 Lecture Hours)

8.1 Policy issue concept

8.2 Institutional structure

8.3 Various challenges related with the policy in relation with the current policy

8.4 The way forward

References

George C. Edward II and Ira Sarakansky, The Policy Predicament: Making and Implementing Public Policy (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1978) latest available edition.

C. J. Bennet , How States Utilise Foreign Evidence, Journal of Public Policy 11(1), pp.39-54) 1991.

Charles L. Cochran and Eloise F. Malone, Public Policy Perspectives and Choices (Viva Books Private Limited, New Delhi, 2007).

James Anderson, Public Policy Making, (New Work: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979)

Norman Frohlic and J.A. Oppenheimer, Modern Political Economy, New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India, 1978 (Latest available edition).

Pradeep Sahani, Public Policy: Conceptual Dimension (Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1987).

R.K. Sapru, Public Policy: Formulation, Implementation and Evaluation, New Delhi: Sterling Publisher Pvt. Ltd., Second Revised Edition 2004.

Richard Rose, Lesson Drawing in Public Policy: A Guide to Learning Across Time and Space (New Jeresy, Catham House 1993)

Wayne Parsons Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis (Edward Elgar, Aldershot, UK; Brookfield, US 1995).

I.M.d. Little, Ethics, Economics and politics: Principles of Public policy, Oxford University

Press, 2002

Devika Paul, Public Policy: Formulation and Implementation in India, Devika Publications, Delhi, 1994.

Michael Howlett and M. Ramesh, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems (Oxford University Press, 2003)

Michael Hill and Peter Hupe, Implementing Public Policy: Governance in Theory and Practice, (New Delhi: Sage Publication Ltd, 2006).

P.R. Rijal, Fundamentals of Public Policy Analysis, (Kathmandu: Mrs. Indira Rijal, 1995).