Policy Process and Negotiation

This course aims to enhance students’ understanding of public policy processes. The class format combines lectures and case discussions. The lectures cover theories and empirical research findings, as well as real-world examples, and the treatment of topics is comparative and international in scope; this approach helps students to look at their own countries from an outside perspective and to see their distinctiveness. Students are asked to critically evaluate trade-offs involved in policy processes, which can vary considerably, especially at the international level. A comparative approach comes at the expense of in-depth analyses of single national or local cases – a gap students are encouraged to fill when they write reflection essays. Given the lecturer’s background, the course will be taught mostly from a public administration perspective, with some interdisciplinary influences.