106th NATIONAL MANAGEMENT COURSE
(Monday, 20 February 2017 to Friday, 21 July 2017)
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
HAND BOOK
Issued by
TRAINING WING
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Absolute Poverty: The minimum level of income required to sustain life. Poverty may be measured through calorific approach basic needs approach.
Acculturation: Acquiring cultural traits or characteristics of another culture or cultural groups through direct contact or interaction.
Adaptation: The manner or process through which a small group (like family, tribe, etc) fits into a larger social environment.
Administrative Governance: Administrative governance is a system of policy implementation carried out through an efficient, independent, accountable and open public management.
Affirmative Action: Affirmative action describes the deliberate policy of giving preferential treatment to some groups in a society on the grounds that such groups have hitherto been disadvantaged either by governmental policies or as a result of popular prejudice. Affirmative action-sometimes also called reverse discrimination-has been used to help ethnic minorities and women and it is sometimes suggested that it should be used to help other kinds of minorities.
Ambassador: The highest official diplomatic representative of the government to a foreign nation. The ambassador lives and works in that nation and represents his country’s interests.
Anarchy: Implies not the complete chaos or absence of structure or rules, but rather a lack of a central government that can enforce rules.
Assimilation: The process in which an ethnic or a social group or a minority is absorbed into the larger receiving society.
Attitude: Behavior of an individual or group to an object in a consistent manner.
Authority: The right to give an order, such that the command will be obeyed with no question as to that right or, if not an order, the right in some way nonetheless to evoke legitimate power in the support of a decision.
Balance of Power: A condition in which the distribution of military and political forces among nations means no one state is sufficiently strong to dominate all the others. It may be global, regional or local in scope.
Bargaining Power: The general capacity of a state to control the behavior of others, power to cause another actor to do an action (also see structural power).
Belligerent: A nation in a state of war or hostilities.
Bilateral: In international affairs, engagement of two nation states. A bilateral treaty, for instance, is a treaty between two nations.
Brezhnev Doctrine: Reinforced the right of the Soviets to intervene where Moscow deemed socialism was threatened by 'counter-revolutionary forces'.
Bureaucracy: Bureaucracy, in its most general sense, describes a way of organizing the activities of any institution so that it functions efficiently and impersonally.
Case Study: A holistic treatment of one particular subject through a detailed analysis.
Casus belli: An act or event which is cited as the justification for the commencement of hostilities.
Catch-22: A situation in which one is permanently frustrated and from which one cannot escape, since all possible courses of action either have undesirable consequences or lead inevitably to further frustration of one’s a aims; named after the novel by Joseph Heller.
CBMs: are agreements between two or more parties regarding exchanges of information and verification, typically with respect to the use of military forces and armaments.
Ceteris Paribus: All things being equal or all things remain constant.
Charisma: Charisma was originally a theological notion, with the literal meaning of the ‘gift of grace’, an attribute in Catholic theology of Saints. Its evolution as a political concept stems from WEBER, who used it to describe one of his three principal types of political authority. To Weber charisma was a personal quality of attraction and psychological power capable of inspiring deep political loyalty in large numbers of people.
Civil Society: Civil society is a concept in political theory which was familiar to most political thinkers from the seventeenth century onwards; that is the organized society over which the state rules.
Class: Self-identity and self-awareness of a group (aggregate of people possessing the same life-chances).
Client State: A nation state that is allied with and beholden to another state (in its "sphere of influence"). Typically a large powerful nation has client states that it aids and protects, to pursue its own national interests.
Cold War: The period in world affairs from c.1947-1990, marked by ideological, economic and political hostility and competition between the US and the Soviet Union, and drawing in other powers at various levels of involvement.
Concert of Europe: The informal system of consultation set up by the Great Powers (Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and Russia) to manage the balance of power at the end of the Congress system.
Conflict:Perceived rival and incompatible claims over some desired "good".
Congress of Vienna: Meeting of the four main victors over Napoleon and France: Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia.
Containment: Policy pursued by the US toward the Soviet Union c. 1947-1989, the aim of which was to deny Moscow opportunities to expand its political influence abroad, to draw a line and contain the Soviets within their borders, (also see Truman Doctrine).
Cost Benefit Analysis: A set of procedures based on welfare economics for guiding public expenditure decisions.
Crowding Out: Crowding Out occurs when private sector investments decrease as a result of an increase in public investment.
Culture Total repertoire of human action (and its products) which are socially transmitted (as opposed to genetically transmitted). Socially transmitted behaviour.
Current Account Balance: Trade balance plus invisible balance and the unrequited transfers.
D 5: Denuclearization, demilitarization, de-alignment, democratization, and development, five main goals of peace and social movements.
Defence Strategy: Involves the assumption that war will be fought with three aims in mind: (1) to punish the aggressor; (2) to deny territorial gains; (3) to limit the damage to oneself (also see deterrence).
Demand: Demand of a particular product depends on a number of things including its price, prices of other products, incomes, tastes, fashions, etc.
Demography: Scientific study of human population, with respect to size, structure, growth and development.
Deterrence: Efforts to dissuade an opponent from doing something considered against the actor's interests by making the costs of action outweigh the benefits with threat of punishment, the implicit or explicit purpose of this strategy was to avoid actually fighting war (also see defence).
Devolution: Devolution is the process of transferring power from central government to a lower or original level; among the reasons given for doing so are that it will increase the efficiency of government and meet demands from special sections of the community for a degree of control over their own affairs.
Diplomacy: Practice of conducting negotiations between nations to reach formal or informal (backdoor) resolutions.
Doctrine of Flexible Response: A nuclear utilization strategy which legitimized the notion of limited nuclear war, involved two dimensions: limited targetting ('counterforce strategy') and the use of battlefield nuclear weapons (also see MAD).
Economics: Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce means to satisfy competing ends.
Economic Governance: Economic governance includes processes of decision-making that directly or indirectly affect a country’s economic activities or its relationships with other economies. Economic governance has a major influence on societal issues, such as equity, poverty and quality of life.
Economic Instruments: Foreign aid, trade treaties, inducements, tariffs, boycotts, sanctions.
Economic Policy: Economic policy is actions (or inactions) taken by the government to influence behavior of economic agents (consumers, producers, service providers)
Economies of Scale: Usually one says there are economies of scale in production of cost per unit made declines with the number of units produced. It is a descriptive, quantitative term. One measure of the economies of scale is the cost per unit made. There can be analogous economies of scale in marketing or distribution of a product or service too. The term may apply only to certain ranges of output quantity.
Elasticity of Demand: Responsiveness of demand to price is known as elasticity of demand.
Elasticity of Supply: Responsiveness of supply to price is known as elasticity of supply.
Elite: A group of individuals in the society who may be socially acknowledged as superior to others and who may control or dominate some or all of the other groups in the society.
Equilibrium in Goods and Money Markets: The equilibrium in goods and money markets is reached when the IS and LM curves intersect each other and that yields equilibrium level of income and interest rates.
Ethnicity: A view of things where one’s own group is different from others, and indeed is the centre of everything.
Excess Burden: A loss of welfare above and beyond taxes collected. It is also referred to welfare cost or dead-weight loss.
Exchange Rate: Fixed and flexible exchange rates.
Externality: An activity of one entity affects the welfare of another entity in a way that is outside the market.
Federalism: A form of government in which power is constitutionally divided between different authorities in such a way that each authority exercises responsibility for a particular set of functions and maintains its own institutions to discharge those functions.
Feudalism: Aristocratic or nobility rule. A network of obligations which link the highest to the lowest in society. Centralization of authority, professional judiciary, circulation of money, and modern communications contributed to the decline and downfall of feudalism in Europe by the end of the thirteenth century.
Fiscal Deficit: When public expenditures exceed the public revenues.
Fiscal Policy: The use of taxation and government expenditure to regulate the aggregate level of economic activity.
Foreign Aid: Donations of money, goods, or services from one nation to another. Such donations can be made for a humanitarian, altruistic purpose, or to advance the national interests of the giving nation.
Foreign Policy: Approaches, goals and the means used by a nation in its interactions with other nation states, in furtherance of its national interests. Foreign policy can include economic, diplomatic, military, and social and cultural relations with other nations.
G 8 Nations: The "Group of 8" major industrial nations (now Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States) whose heads of state meet annually to discuss economic and political issues (especially those having major impacts on international affairs).
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) Value of all final goods and services produced in a country during the year.
Gini Coefficient: is one of the measures of income inequality.
Globalization: Extension of an idea or product to other or all parts of the globe.
Globalize (Pluralism, Neo-Liberalism): An approach to international relations that emphasizes the growing interdependence of not only world governments, but also other aspects of society such as individual travelers and traders, multinational corporations and non-governmental international organizations.
GNP (Gross National Product): GDP plus net factor income from abroad.
Governance: Governance is exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a nation’s affairs. It is the complex mechanisms, processes, relationships and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their rights and obligations and mediate their differences.
ICBMs: Inter-continental ballistic missiles.
Idealism (Liberalism): An approach to international relations that emphasizes international law and international organizations over military force alone. Also emphasizes the latent power of everyday citizens and grass-roots organizations.
Ideology: A conception of the world which carries an emotional appeal (normative appeal) relevant to social or political action. Ideology may be the most difficult, but the most often used concept in the social sciences, and one that has endless sub-meanings in both academic and every-day discussion. The simplest definition is probably given by a translation of the German word Weltanschauung, which is often used as though inter-translatable with ‘ideology’. This translation would render ‘ideology’ as ‘World-view’, the overall perception one has of what the world, especially the social world, consists of and how it works.
Immigration: Movement of people from one country to another, for purposes of permanent or long-term relocation. Nations typically have policies restricting or governing immigration, as a means of population control and national security. Immigration controls can also have cultural goals.
Inflation: A sustained rise in the general price level. Inflation rate is measured as a rate of change in the Consumer price Index, i.e. weighted average of prices of the goods consumed.
Integrative Leadership: Integrative leadership is a philosophy or approach to living a conscious life. It is about rekindling the curiosity to know yourself (attitude), what you are made of (model), where you are going (ideal) and discovering what you are here to do (purpose).
IGO (International governmental organization): Any international body or agency set up by the state, controlled by its member states, and dealing primarily with their common interests.
International: An adjective referring to relations or actions involving more than one nation state. For instance, the phrase "Pakistan’s international relations" refers to the foreign policies and engagements of the Pakistan with the rest of the world. An international organization or an international agreement involves several countries.
Inverse Elasticity Rule: For goods that are unrelated in consumption, efficiency requires that tax rates be inversely proportional to elasticities.
IPP: IPP (Independent Power Producer) is a privately owned power producer (power plant).
Judicial Activism: is a term used by political scholars to describe a tendency by judges to consider outcomes, attitudinal preferences, and other public policy issues in interpreting applicable existing law.
Karma Samsara: It is one of the fundamental beliefs of Hinduism. It means that human life is merely one link in a chain of lives that extends far into the past and projects far into the future. The point of the origin of the chain cannot be determined. The process of man’s involvement in the universe – the chain of birth and death – is called SAMSARA. The law that governs SAMSARA is called KARMA.
Kautilya: (late 300s bc), also known as Chanakya, minister to the Indian king Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Mauryan Empire (321?-180 bc). Little is known about Kautilya. He was educated at Taxila, then the capital of Gandhara, in present-day Pakistan. He almost certainly helped Chandragupta overthrow the last king of the Nanda dynasty. Some sources describe him as a wily schemer who adopted any methods available to advance the plans of the king. Kautilya is best known as one of the chief authors of the Arthasastra, the first and most important Indian text on how a king should wield political and economic power.