Dr Christopher Sabatini

This course is available on the Double Master of Public Administration (LSE-Columbia), Double Master of Public Administration (LSE-Sciences Po), Double Master of Public Administration (LSE-University of Toronto), MPA Dual Degree (LSE and Columbia), MPA Dual Degree (LSE and Hertie), MPA Dual Degree (LSE and NUS), MPA Dual Degree (LSE and Sciences Po), MPA Dual Degree (LSE and Tokyo), Master of Public Administration and Master of Public Policy. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access) and demand is typically very high. Priority is given to students from the School of Public Policy, students from other programmes will be considered if places remain.

This half-unit MT course explores the challenges developing countries face in pursuing economic and political development. Matters of state-society relations, insertion into the global economy, structure versus agency, political economy, the role of multilateral institutions, development assistance and private investment, and the importance of institutions have been heavily researched and discussed in academia and policymaking circles. Those discussions and issues have also shaped policy debates and policy (and not always in a good way) in international development and domestic policymaking and politics. Despite the lack of physical fashion sense among academics, these theories go in and out of fashion, with implications for international and domestic development policymaking.

This course will examine these theories and understanding of development over the years—from the modernization theories of the 1950s and 1960s, to dependency theory of the 1960s and 1970s, to the wave of neoliberal reforms and new-institutionalism of the 1980s and 1990s and, last, to the rise of China and its implications for global understanding of development and international development policy. In this course, through this literature students will gain an understanding of the legacies of state formation, international political economy and the relationship to inclusive democratic institutions and their relationship to development and economic policymaking.

But this class is intended to be a practical introduction to policymaking as well. So, while we will draw on these theories to understand development, we will seek to apply them to analyse and respond to real-work challenges to development today. Policymaking of all kinds and at all levels (local, state, national, global) takes place in a political environment that shapes how political actors identify specific policy preferences, seek to advance their own goals and realize their own visions of how the world ought to be and weigh options and trade offs. Public policy professionals must navigate the intersecting realms of political institutions, multiple political actors and stakeholders, political ideas and discourse, and the capacity of bureaucracies to successfully and independently implement and evaluate those policies. To this end, students will learn how to identify a development ‘problem’, how to organize and select policy options and challenges to address that issue, how to conduct a stakeholder analysis, how to account for bureaucratic inadequacies for implementation, and how to objectively evaluate the impact of the intended policy and make any necessary adjustments.  

With this background, the objectives of this course are:

• To enable students to understand international political economy and the historic challenges of development in different contexts and across different policy realms (poverty alleviation, combatting climate change, gender inclusiveness, etc). 

• To help students become effective participants in public policymaking, as policy analysts, administrators and advocates by gaining tools to help them assess international and domestic contexts, recognize the unique challenges that they impose and explore what motivates and constrains the various actors within those contexts.

• To anticipate the issues and challenges that arise in development policy in different political environments, whether local, state, national or international arenas.

• To recognize the competing interests and strategic alternatives that surround development, particularly in different political contexts, and why this recognition is necessary in policy analysis.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars totalling a minimum of 30 hours across Michaelmas Term.

Students will be provided with regular feedback on their work during MT.

1. Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can be Done About It (Oxford, 2007)

2. Lloyd Gruber, Ruling the World: Power Politics and the Rise of Supranational Institutions (Princeton, 2000)

3. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012).

4. Robert Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization (Princeton, 2003)

5. Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein, eds., Back to Basics: State Power in a Contemporary World (Oxford, 2013)

Case study (20%) and policy memo (30%) in the MT.
Take-home assessment (50%) in the LT.

There will be one seminar-based case-study, role playing activity in the first month of the terms. Based on the early readings and discussions, students will choose a development problem, and then work with me and other students to identify the policy options, conduct a stakeholder analysis and the likely positions of the individual stakeholders.  Then in class we will break into groups to conduct a role-playing exercise of how policy choices would likely play out in the case study, with students forming teams of individual stakeholders (government, labour unions, international donors/banks, private investors, voters, and opposition parties/actors.) I will work with students to select the case study country and problem and prepare the background materials. 

In the second half the term, students will prepare an individually-authored policy memo on a policy ‘problem’ that will follow the format and analytical framework of our in-class case.

The take-home assessment will encourage students to think creatively about the ideas and arguments presented in the course and will include at least one long essay question, and a set of analytical short answer questions.  No outside research will be required and it can be open book. This last component of the assessment will count for 50% of the student's overall course mark.