Course 2024-2025 a.y.

This seminar tries to address this problem: how it is possible to design decisional processes able to overcome the obstacles likely to arise in the attempts to introduce an innovation in the solution of collective problems. To involve participants in a close-to-earth experience and support the debate, after a theoretical introduction, an educational digital game will be used (P-Cube).

Following this objective, the seminar is structured into three parts in class, an assignment at home and a test for nonattending students:

• Theoretical introduction: a framework to analyze policy decision-making processes; Applying the framework to real situations: playing the missions of the P-Cube educational digital game; Debriefing phase: discussing the learning objectives of the P-Cube missions (8h, February 23d)
• A model to analyze policy decision-making processes. Exercise in groups: The Besola Wetland case. Debriefing (4h, March 1st)
• Strategies for a successful decision making. Exercise in groups: Anti-fracking conflicts (Canada). An introduction to policy instruments (4h, March 8th).
• Assignment at home; evaluation of assignments (especially for students with 50% of attendance) (4h, March 15th).
• Test for non-attending students (scheduled for April 19th, 2024).

• Understand the different models of policy decision-making e the criticisms to the rational-compehensive model.
• Analyze policy decision-making processes using a specific theoretical framework.
• Identify the strategies useful to cope with the complexity of decision-making processes and to overcome the barriers to policy innovations.

• Recognize the characteristics of the real, empirical contexts in which policies are designed and decided.
• Understand the complexity of the policy decision-making in the real world and why the incremental solutions are in general the results of these processes.
• Select the strategies useful to overcome decisional stalemates and problems among actors in empirical decisional processes regarding sustainability issues and policies to reach non-incremental decisions.

• Lectures
• Practical Exercises
• Interaction/Gamification

a) Cases will be discussed to identify theoretical concepts from real-life situations and to introduce the missions of the digital serious game b) The missions of the educational digital game have the goal to introduce students to real-life situations and to apply the theoretical concepts in these contexts. The participant will be asked to put himself or herself in the shoes of a policy innovator who tries to steer a proposal through the complexities of public policy making. In this journey he/she will meet a large number of characters who in some cases will fight against the innovation and in others will help. He/she will be confronted with a series of choices between different alternatives to complete the different missions. The seminar aims to offer a learning experience that does not try to simplify the complexities of public policy making, nor to provide ready-to-use solutions to the decisional problems. On the contrary it will stimulate the participants to analyze every single case and to derive a first-hand experience of the different elements which compose the conceptual framework developed by the literature and that represents the more realistic description of how public policies and innovative services come about.

To obtain the attending status, students will be required to form groups to discuss cases and participate in playing the missions of the education digital game P-Cube, included the debriefing phases. In order to achieve the learning outcomes and measure their acquisition by students: - Not only is attendance recommended, but class interaction and participation are evaluated. Students are expected to read the assigned material for each topic before class and participate actively in the discussion. This aims to test the student’s ability to interact and think critically, applying the concepts presented throughout the seminar. Class participation accounts for 30% of the final grade. - To test the understanding of theoretical framework presented in the course and their implications in real decisionmaking cases, students will take an individual written exam at the end of the course that accounts for 70% of the final grade.

Assessment of not attending students is entirely based on an individual written exam. The exam probes the student’s understanding of the concepts inherent to policy decision-making and the student’s ability to apply the learned framework through the analysis of case studies based on real policy decison-making processes.

• Slides used during the course
• Bruno Dente. 2014. Understanding Policy Decision. Cham: Springer.
• Giancarlo Vecchi. 2021. “Public Policy and Decision-Making Processes. Introducing the Rationale of the PCube Digital Educational Game.” In https://www.p-cube-project.eu/literature-reviews/
• Other material will be assigned at course inception.

• Bruno Dente. 2014. Understanding Policy Decision. Cham: Springer.
• Giancarlo Vecchi. 2021. “Public Policy and Decision-Making Processes. Introducing the Rationale of the PCube Digital Educational Game.” In https://www.p-cube-project.eu/literature-reviews/
• Other material will be assigned at course inception.