grounded in primary materials, insider accounts and ethnographic case studies, explores ways of thinking about policy making as a form of work or practice…
This is a core component of the Academy of Government’s Masters programme in Public Policy.
There are two related dimensions to the course. The first is substantive, about the contexts, activities and artefacts – the people and things – that are entailed in making policy happen. The second is methodological and conceptual, about how we know policy work, how we make it available for interrogation and reflection. This complements (and sometimes challenges) more abstract approaches to policy and politics, and is essential for MPP students working at the intersection of theory and practice.
The course is designed in two phases: it begins in collaborative learning through secondary material, in the close discussion of academic case studies, and shades into individual learning as students research and write cases of their own.