杏吧论坛

Dr Michael Lerner

This course is available on the MSc in European and International Public Policy, MSc in European and International Public Policy (杏吧论坛 and Bocconi), MSc in European and International Public Policy (杏吧论坛 and Sciences Po), MSc in Public Administration and Government (杏吧论坛 and Peking University), MSc in Public Policy and Administration and MSc in Regulation. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course is capped at 2 groups.

Students should normally be taking GV4E9 Approaches and Issues in Public Policy and Administration or already have a good knowledge of comparative public policy. Waiving of these requirements will be at the discretion of the course teacher.

The course examines explanations of policy change using cross-national comparison.

The course will focus on cases in key policy domains (chosen according to the literature available and interest for wider analytical questions, as well as the expertise available), but in the examination and assessed essay, any set of (2) countries or international jurisdictions such as the EU can be used as examples. Key topics include: economic and social policy, education and labour market reform, technological change.

This course is delivered through a combination of seminars and lectures totalling a minimum of 20 hours across the Lent Term and the Summer Term. This year, some or all of this teaching may be delivered through a combination of online and on-campus lectures and seminars. This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Lent Term.

Students will write one unassessed essay during the term.

There is no single textbook but the following are particularly useful introductions: 

A Dodds Comparative Public Policy (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2018); Various authors Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis Special Issue: Twenty years of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice: Research and Practice, Volume 20, Issue 1 (2018); M Moran, M Rein, and RE Goodin (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy (2008)

Online assessment (50%, duration: 7 days) in the ST.
Essay (50%, 3000 words)

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.