Dr Michael Lerner

Dr Rehan Jamil

This course is available on the MSc in European and International Public Policy (LSE and Bocconi), MSc in European and International Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), 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 2 groups.

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 teachers.

The course examines explanations of policy change using comparative methods. Students will become familiar with core models of agenda-setting and policy adoption, consider dimensions of variation in public policy, and identify and test drivers of policy change. The course will also offer foundational instruction in research design, measurement, and methods for case-based comparative analysis. Specific topics include policy change for economic transitions, emerging technologies, and social protection.

This course is delivered through a combination of seminars and lectures totalling a minimum of 20 hours across the Winter Term. This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 piece of coursework in the WT.

There is no single textbook but the following are particularly useful introductions: 

Dodds, Anneliese. (2018), Comparative Public Policy (2nd ed.) Macmillan International Higher Education.

Hall, Peter (1997). "The role of interests, institutions and ideas in the comparative political economy of the advanced industrial state" in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture and Structure (Mark I. Lichbach and Alan S. Zucker, eds.). Cambridge University Press. Chapter 7.

Hacker, Jacob S., Paul Pierson, and Kathleen Thelen. (2015). “Drift and conversion: Hidden faces of institutional change” in Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis (James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, eds.). Cambridge University Press. Chapter 7.

Breetz, Hanna, Matto Mildenberger, and Leah Stokes (2018). "The political logics of clean energy transitions." Business and Politics, 20.4: 492-522.

Brummer, Chris and Yesha Yadav (2019). “Fintech and the Innovation Trilemma.” Georgetown Law Journal, 107.2:235–308.

Video (20%) in the WT.
Research paper (80%) in the ST.

Students will create up to two 4–6 minute video blog posts interpreting a recent event through the lens of course material (one must be uploaded in the first half of term, and one in the second half of term), of which one will be submitted for assessment.

The research paper will consist of a comparative case analysis of 3000 words.