Mr Christian Willmes

This course is available on the MPA in International Development, MPA in Public Policy and Management, MPA in Public and Economic Policy, MPA in Public and Social Policy, MPA in Social Impact, MSc in European and International Public Policy, MSc in European and International Public Policy (LSE and Bocconi), MSc in European and International Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in Public Administration and Government (LSE 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 3 groups. The deadline for applications is 17:00 on Tuesday 29 September 2020. You will be informed of the outcome by 17:00 on Wednesday 30 September 2020.

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 25 hours across the Lent Term and the Summer Term. This year, some or all of this teaching will 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: B G Peters, Institutional Theory in Political Science: The New Institutionalism. Third edition (Pinter, London and New York, 2011); P John, Analysing Public Policy (Pinter, 2000); W Parsons, Public Policy (Edward Elgar, 1995); P A Hall & D Soskice (Eds), Varieties of Capitalism (2001);. W. Streeck and K Thelen (Eds), Beyond continuity: institutional change in advanced political economies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Dodds, A Comparative Public Policy (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2013); VA Schmidt and M Thatcher (Eds), Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Exam (50%, duration: 2 hours) in the summer exam period.
Essay (50%, 3000 words).