Professor Daniel Berliner

This course is available on the Executive Master of Public Policy. This course is not available as an outside option.

There are no pre-requisites for this course.

The Capstone project facilitates application of analytical tools developed on the programme. Students will undertake a group project (in teams usually of 3 to 5 people) relating to a public policy problem faced by the Civil Service. The group will have one week to work on an issue identified jointly by the Civil Service and LSE academics, investigating and developing a workable solution to the problem. They will then deliver a presentation, followed by a policy memo and two articles. 

A one-week modular teaching block.

Feedback will be provided on work-in-progress during the project duration and on the presentation on the final day of the module.

Readings that are specific to project work will be distributed at the beginning of the course.  Useful preliminary reading includes: Charles E. Lindblom and David K. Cohen, Social Science and Social Problem Solving (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979; Martha S. Feldman, Order Without Design: Information Production and Policy-making (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989); Ray Pawson, Evidence-based Policy: A Realist Perspective (London: Sage, 2006); Office for Government Commerce Common Causes of Project Failure (London: OGC, 2004); Strategy Survival Guide (London: Prime Minister's Strategy Unit. July 2004; C. R. Cook, Just Enough Project Management (McGraw-Hill, 2004); J. E. McGrath and F. Tschan, Dynamics in Groups and Teams: Groups as Complex Action Systems, chapter three in M. S. Poole and A. H. Van de Ven (eds) Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Presentation (20%), project (50%) and coursework (30%).

The project work is conducted in teams, and the assessment is based on a collective group mark for each component except in exceptional circumstances.

1. Presentation (20%) on the final day of the module.

2. Policy memo (50%), summarising the proposal for the relevant minister, which incorporates the feedback from the presentation, due three weeks after the module (1500 words).

3. Two standard-length newspaper articles (30%), due three weeks after the module.

In the two articles (500 words each), the students should consider how their policy proposal would be reported in two different media outlets.