Visiting Professor in the Department of Politics, University of Vienna, 2018-2019, teaching courses in Making Policy, Doing Comparison and Doing Politics and Making Policy at Bachelor’s and Master’s levels respectively…
BAK 13: Making policy, doing comparison: Comparative politics usually means comparing one country or policy with another, or with many others. But what about the comparisons that policy makers themselves make? This course seeks to understand international and comparative politics and policy making as based in the situated ‘doings and sayings’ of human beings in interaction with each other. We pay particular attention to international institutions, as well as to domestic contexts in which some international or comparative dimension is present. The course begins by exploring the worlds of the activist, the public official and the elected representative, and goes on to consider the core practices of participation in meetings and the production and circulation of documents. It investigates just how comparisons are made, reviewing associated concepts of learning and translation.
M7: Doing politics and making policy: What do people do when they are doing politics or making policy? What do ‘policy’ and ‘politics’ consist of? What is political work and how is it done? What’s it like being an activist, a bureaucrat or an elected representative? What happens in meetings, and why do documents matter so much? This course seeks to explore the microsociology of the political process, drawing on a range of perspectives from different disciplines.