国際公共政策実践研究（Writing Public Policy Cases for SDGs）

The course aims to discuss the public policy-related challenges and opportunities to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this course, participants will be introduced to problem solving in public policy by using “teaching cases” (or simply “cases”). A teaching case is a narrative which provides information on a real-world situation where people, such as policy makers or business executives, are supposed to make a decision or solve a problem. A well-known approach is one developed by Harvard Business School (often called “the case method”) mostly for corporate decision making as compared to ours for public policy decision making or problem solving.

The cases will cover topics related to SDGs such as water, sanitation, transportation, spillover effect of infrastructure, fin-tech, micro-financing, philanthropy and others. Students can learn how to read, analyze, discuss, and write about cases and then to use a case for guiding others for decision making practice.

Students are required to do analytical work in a small team with a given narrative by interpreting the relationships among incidents, analyzing interactions between stakeholders, identifying possible options, evaluating choices and their outcomes, and comparing alternatives. Analytical work with a teaching case also helps students understand the relevance and importance of abstract concepts and theory in practice.

Towards the end of the course, participants are required to write a case and thereafter have opportunities to discuss cases which other students present so that they would develop critical thinking in analyzing problems and making decisions on practical issues.