Comparative Policy Process MPM

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Why don’t policymakers always choose the most efficient policies? Why do policymakers in neighboring countries facing similar policy dilemmas make different choices? How do actors inside and outside of government mold their policy proposals and actions to achieve their political and policy objectives? What sorts of strategies do they use? Using a combination of theoretical understanding and case studies, this course provides a comparative introduction to public policymaking. This course attempts to build students’ skills in analyzing policymaking from two distinctive perspectives. The “Macro Perspective” (also known as the “Structural Perspective”) focuses on broad structural causes of and constraints on policymaking. These causes and constraints include economic development, political culture and ideas, patterns of interest group regulation and interaction with government, feedback effects from past policy choices, and globalization. We will also focus on political institutions as venues for policymaking. We examine these macro factors through different types of policies (e.g., health policies, moral policies, and policies such as climate change that address “common pool” problems), focusing on how distinctive policy sector characteristics may affect the policymaking process as well as the strategic choices made by political actors and policy outcomes. A second “Micro Perspective” (also known as the “Agency Perspective”) on the policy process focuses on the strategic choices that political and societal actors (party leaders, interest groups, heads of government departments, etc.) make in trying to achieve their political and policy objectives while responding to a variety of political and social constraints. We examine strategies such as issue framing, agenda setting, building coalitions among diverse societal interests, and building legislative governing coalitions in multi-party systems. We also try to develop the skills required for success at those tasks through memo-writing, and group simulations. Throughout the course, we will also try to develop developing students’ capacity to understand a variety of political systems holistically by looking in detail at specific countries and policymaking cases. This course gives particular attention to comparing policymaking processes and outcomes in five countries (the United States, China, Brazil, Germany, and India), plus the European Union. Rather than a “country by country” approach, however, the course is organized thematically. Each class session will utilize materials from one or more of these political systems to understand how the strategies employed by political actors and the constraints on political action they face influence policy choices, outputs and outcomes.