PPOL 517: PUBLIC POLICY PROCESS
This course describes and analyzes the politics, institutions, norms, and actors involved in the agenda-setting, formulation, legitimation, and implementation of public policy in the US. Students learn how to apply analytical frameworks that explain how the policymaking process works. Students also discuss how the policy making process varies across different issue areas. Professors
Gormley,
Rom,
Nadel, Posner,
Fellowes,
Webster,
Heitshusen.
PPOL 519: COMPARATIVE POLICY PROCESS:
This course provides analytical tools to understand how public policy is formulated, adopted and implemented in the contemporary world. Topics include "macro" level forces that influence policymaking, such as culture, globalization, patterns of interest organization and cross-national policy learning, as well as the impact of different institutional arrangements and actors (e.g., chief executives, judges, bureaucracies and militaries). These tools are used to understand policy choices and outcomes for both advanced industrial and less developed countries in a variety of policy sectors. Students in the International Policy and Development track normally take this class instead of PPOL 517. Professor
Weaver.
PPOL 560: ETHICS, VALUES AND PUBLIC POLICY
This course provides an introduction to the following course themes: 1) Values (and not just interests) are fundamental to public policy, and so sophisticated policy analysts should understand the roles that values can play in policy analysis and the policy process; 2) Values are contested in that political actors interpret core values (e.g., equity, liberty, justice, security, efficiency) in conflicting ways and also place different weights on different values; 3) Differing institutional arrangements (markets, democracy, authority) enhance certain values and potentially suppress others; 4) Differing forms of reasoning (e.g., utilitarianism, deontology, or casuistry) offer differing ways to reach conclusions regarding value choices, but that no method can be demonstrated to provide the answer to these choices; 5) The systematic analysis of values can provide policy recommendations that are superior to those made without systematic reflection; 6) Policy analysts should be able to provide a reasoned explanation regarding the values embedded in the policy recommendations they make. Professors
Rom,
Butler.
PPOL 580: PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
This course introduces students to public management: actors performing managerial roles in the pursuit of public purposes. The course examines the constraints on and strategies of public managers in a democratic society; how the challenges of public management vary across different organizational and policy settings; and how public management and policy analysis frequently intersect. The first section of the course provides background and a general framework for understanding public management. This part emphasizes that public managers are charged with carrying out public purposes within bureaucracies that are agents of, and accountable to, legislators and the courts. The second section of the course focuses on the particular functions and strategies of managers in these bureaucracies (public and private). The third section of the course focuses on challenges from below: how managers try to motivate employees and how they try to learn from or placate stakeholders and customers. Throughout the course considerable attention is paid to democratic accountability. Professors
Rom,
Ferrara.
PPOL 581: COMPARATIVE PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
This course provides a comparative introduction to public management in a comparative perspective. The first part of the course examines basic issues of governmental organization (e.g., relationships between civil servants and politicians, budgeting, recruitment, organizational culture, accountability mechanisms). The second and third sections of the course examine public management reforms and policy implementation. Throughout the course, there will be a balance between general and theoretical materials and case materials. The experiences of both advanced industrial countries and less developed countries will be discussed. (This course can be taken in place of PPOL 580, Public Management.) Professor
Weaver.
