20511 - POLITICS AND POLICY MAKING

The course is an essential step in understanding how public policies are formulated, adopted and implemented in national and international settings and is therefore strongly linked to the overall master program.

The course provides the main analytical tools needed to understand the functioning of national and international policy making. The course is structured as follows.

• Brief introduction on the relations and main differences between political science and public policy analysis.
• Policy analysis theory and analysis of the various policy process phases.
• Case study analysis and discussion. The tools provided in the first part of the course are used in order to understand specific policy evolutions and changes over the past decades.

• Understand patterns of decision-making in various national and international contexts.
• Unpack the policy content into various dimensions in order to better grasp the different drivers of policy-oriented political behaviour and public decisions.
• Detect similarities and differences among various policy preferences of policy actors in various decision-making contexts. 

• Identify policy preferences and map the positioning of various actors with reference to a specific international or national policy.
• Provide policy feedbacks under the form of comparative assessments and comparative policy background analyses.
• Draft and communicate policy recommendations and write policy briefs and/or memos aimed at influencing preference formation and negotiation of policy actors.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Individual assignments
• Group assignments

Guest speakers are invited and both individual and group assignments regarding policy analysis are requested.

The assessment methods have been designed in order to stimulate your active involvement in the course and to develop a mix of knowledge and know how. Detailed instructions on the group assignment are provided in class. The grade breakdown is as follows:

• Group assignment 40%
• Final exam 60%

• Textbook: M. HOWLETT, M. RAMESH, A. PERL, Studying Public Policy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Coursepack: Collection of scientific articles (is available online).