(a) The objective of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization and of New Public Management was to limit government…

(a) The LPG-NPM Paradox: State Expansion and Expenditure

The New Public Management (NPM) paradigm and Liberalization, Privatization, and Globalization (LPG) reforms prescribed rolling back the state, downsized bureaucracies, and reduced public expenditure through market mechanisms. However, the subsequent decades witnessed an expansion in both state functions and public budgets.

This paradox is explained by the transformation of the state rather than its diminution; older regularities such as Wagner's Law (public spending rises with income) and Baumol's "cost disease" of labour-intensive services also push spending up. First, as captured by the "hollow state" thesis of H. Brinton Milward and Keith Provan, contracting out and public-private partnerships do not eliminate state responsibility; instead, they replace direct administration with complex, resource-intensive networks of contract management, audit, and oversight. Second, the shift from direct provision to "regulatory capitalism" (David Levi-Faur and John Braithwaite) necessitated the creation of specialized regulatory bodies across sectors - in India, SEBI (statutory 1992), TRAI (1997), IRDAI (1999), the Competition Commission (2002/2009) and electricity regulators - expanding administrative machinery. Third, globalization generated domestic vulnerabilities, necessitating compensatory welfare interventions - Dani Rodrik (1998) showed that more open economies tend to have bigger governments because the state insures citizens against external risk. In India, despite sustained disinvestment policies, public expenditure expanded due to rising subsidy obligations in food, fuel, and fertilizer, alongside rights-based welfare architectures such as the National Food Security Act and MGNREGA (now succeeded by the VB-G RAM G Act, 2025); the Union Budget has grown to over ₹50 lakh crore in 2025-26.

Furthermore, the modern state must finance new collective goods, notably digital public infrastructure such as the India Stack, cybersecurity, and green transitions. Rather than shrinking, the state has absorbed higher capital and revenue outlays to build systemic capacity and govern market externalities.

(b) Evolution and Theoretical Status of Comparative Public Administration

The basis of Comparative Public Administration (CPA) shifted across decades to capture administrative realities across diverse political contexts. Early CPA relied on rigid, Western-centric institutional approaches. In response, Fred Riggs introduced the ecological and structural-functional approach, formulating the prismatic-sala model to analyze developing polities; Ferrel Heady classified the approaches as modified traditional, development-oriented, general system model-building and middle-range (bureaucracy-centred) theory; and the development administration school (U. L. Goswami, Edward Weidner, Riggs) evaluated bureaucracies against nation-building goals.

Despite these frameworks, CPA long remained pre-theoretical - Riggs himself acknowledged the gap between grand models and testable propositions, and the Comparative Administration Group lost momentum in the 1970s. Riggsian typologies, while conceptually rich, were largely descriptive, static, and culturally deterministic, failing to yield falsifiable, predictive general laws across differing political systems.

The contemporary political-economic process approach addressed these gaps by situating public administration within the wider matrix of state power, global markets, and social classes. Theorists such as Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol spearheaded the "Bringing the State Back In" perspective, conceptualizing state capacity through structural linkages. Evans' formulation of "embedded autonomy" successfully generated robust, middle-range theories explaining divergent developmental trajectories across East Asia and Latin America. Comparative public management research on NPM reforms (Pollitt and Bouckaert) and on policy transfer has added further middle-range findings. While a singular, universal theory of CPA remains unrealized due to context-dependent governance ecologies, the political-economic approach has provided CPA with rigorous, empirically testable middle-range frameworks.

(c) Competency Mapping and Service Delivery in Civil Services

Competency mapping identifies the specific domain knowledge, functional skills, and behavioural indicators required for designated public roles. Moving beyond generalist assumptions, linking competency assessments to career progression incentivizes civil servants toward effective, citizen-centric service delivery.

In India, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC-II, 10th Report, 2008) recommended institutionalizing competency frameworks for placement and promotion, and the Department of Personnel and Training issued a Competency Dictionary for the Civil Services with UNDP support in 2014; the UK's "Success Profiles" (2019) are a comparable model. This transition has been operationalized through Mission Karmayogi and its Framework of Roles, Activities, and Competencies (FRAC), governed by a Special Purpose Vehicle (Karmayogi Bharat). Ministries now prepare Annual Capacity Building Plans, and multi-source (360-degree) feedback has been used since 2016-17 in empanelling senior officers, though critics find it opaque. By continuously assessing competencies and aligning them with dynamic role requirements, this architecture seeks to create an intrinsic incentive structure where domain specialization and demonstrated performance drive career advancement.

However, several institutional rigidities constrain this mechanism. The persistence of the seniority principle over performance in promotions dampens individual motivation to upgrade competencies. Rigid rank-in-corps structures preserve cadre monopolies over specific posts regardless of merit, while pervasive political executive interference in appointments and arbitrary transfers disrupts the objective matching of assessed competency with administrative placement.