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Policy Design (STG-MA-FCR-PDS)

STG-MA-FCR-PDS

Description

In this section we provide information on Policy Design and how you will benefit from it. Policy Design is a foundational course, specifically a course dedicated to the key concepts and tools of policy analysis and theories of the policy process. You will learn the main concepts of policy analysis and the practical way to apply some important theories of the policy process. We will balance analytical content with the expectation of students to learn ‘how to do’ public policy in the real world. Both elements are fundamental and must be seen as integrated. Although the course is foundational, we will discuss recent, original research – with the instructors, we will enter the “shopfloor of the social scientist” so to speak, and look at how data were generated by theoretical approaches, drawing on research projects carried out by Radaelli in the recent years. Radaelli was awarded two advanced grants by the European Research Council in the last ten years.

Let us now clarify the substantive coverage of the course. We will make reference to international, multi-level and transnational policy arenas. However, Policy Design is mostly about providing analytical and empirical skills for researching, comparing, and appraising public policy. For this reason, the choice of one example and case from this or that level or domain of governance is less important than in courses on international relations we offer at the School. At the same time, as instructors, we are mindful that policy analysis needs to take diversity and context into consideration – for that reason, we will interrogate the established models and analytical tools to understand whether they can ‘travel’ outside the OECD countries or be replaced by different approaches. The same will be done in relation to tools like impact assessment, where we will contrast the standard practice with gender impact assessment.

What do we mean by DESIGN, then? “To design” public policy is a task that requires interdisciplinary knowledge (lay and professional) and interdisciplinary activity. As activity, it can’t and should not be left to a single actor – be it those democratically elected or those with epistemic authority. Neither can we assume that a policy is designed somewhere in a single, central control unit and all that follows is the execution of the plan of the designer. Multi-actor design is often a choice and almost always a necessity. We will therefore conceive of public policy as a course of decisions on a policy problem taken by different actors at different stages of the policy process. Even the notion that a policy process goes through stages from a blank sheet of paper to decision, implementation and evaluation is highly fictional. For these reasons the rationale of the module is to learn about policy design in the real world and explore the many ways in which a policy entrepreneur can shape public policy. The reference to policy entrepreneurship is key – throughout the sessions, we will learn analytical skills with the aim of appraising existing policy designs because we want to criticize, improve, reform, shape or change policies. Positive and normative analysis are the components of a single vision. The sessions will draw on a full range of examples, cases, experiences (with guest speakers) and references. The approach to the tools of policy design will be hands-on, with you experimenting with analytical tools in class during the weeks with manual coding (as opposed to computer-assisted coding) of a corpus relative to a policy controversy or to institutional statements.

A short preview of your Course

Policy Design, we said earlier on, is foundational. Foundational does not mean simple or irrelevant: you will soon discover how to benefit in terms of insights and conceptual clarity from the foundational skills of inter-disciplinary policy design. At the outset, we will address questions such as: what is policy design, what is the difference between actor and stakeholder, how do some policy problems get on the agenda and others not, what is the room for policy entrepreneurship. This will allow us to define the field of policy analysis, critically reflect on the concept of ‘design’ and choose how to model actors. An important example will be modelling bureaucracies and de-centering the study of bureaucracies. We will then relate actors to policy types, exploring the argument that ‘policies determine policy’. In the second part you will explore two dimensions of public policy: As Narrative and as Grammar. We will compare what we can do with analytical tools for narrative analysis and institutional grammar coding, and see how the tools can empower you ‘to do public policy’. For example, narrative analysis can be deployed to de-construct authoritarian discourses and to forge alternatives to populist accounts of European integration. We will follow up on this normative dimension with examples.

In terms of tools, we will also have a look at evidence-informed policy, with the examples of impact assessment, gender impact assessment, and consultation. In this case too we will combine building up analytical skills with critical interrogation on the value and limitations of evidence-informed policy in terms of ‘justification’ of choices. What is the role of evidence and what is the role of values in appraising policy options is indeed a big normative question we will address. We will then move to multi-actor frameworks like policy networks, the Advocacy Coalitions Frameworks and the Multiple Streams Models. We will develop skills in understanding policy networks and coalitions: why they emerge, what keeps them together, why they fall apart, and, in the case of advocacy coalitions, how the competition between coalitions impacts on policy change. Another multi-dimensional model is the Multiple Streams Model, where we find problems, actors, and policy solutions blended and often leveraged by a policy entrepreneurs. But, are entrepreneurs accountable, and, especially in global and transnational settings, so to whom? Is policy entrepreneurship compatible with standards of democratic legitimacy? Finally, the last session will be led by you with the delivery of Policy Hackathons

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