Formation/Cours

The study of the social world inevitably involves an understanding of what governments and public institutions do, why they do it, how they do it, and what consequences their policies have. This course introduces students with the different ways in which public policy can be analysed. Following the predominant approaches in social and political science, public policy is theorized as a cycle including several stages. These stages are typically differentiated between agenda-setting, policy formulation, decision making and legitimation, implementation, and evaluation. Although in the real world these processes overlap, the cycle framework fulfils the vital role of integrating the diverse literature, structuring theoretical concepts and analytical tools, and providing a basis for communication between the diverse approaches in the field. During the course, students will learn the different types of public policy analysis, and how the analysis of different stages of the policy cycle requires different theoretical and analytical approaches.

Session 1- What is public policy and how do we study it

Session 2- The policy cycle in theory and in practice

Session 3- Agenda setting in complex policymaking environments: ideas, contexts, actors

Session 4- The causes of different policy designs: decision making, policy formulation and legitimation

Session 5- The consequences of different policy designs: distributional effects

Session 6- Policy Implementation

Session 7- How to evaluate public policy

Session 8- Recent debates on public policy evaluation

Session 9- In-class presentations, research paper writing