Pepper D. Culpepper

Teaching

 

Comparative Political Institutions and Public Policy

This is a semester-long introductory course about political institutions and how they influence fundamental problems of participation and governance in contemporary political systems around the world. It is part of the core curriculum for first-year students in the Master of Public Policy program at the Kennedy School, providing students with an analytical toolkit for understanding the ways in which domestic politics varies across the globe.

Doctoral Research Seminar

This course is required of all first-year Ph.D. candidates in Public Policy at the Kennedy School.  The course provides an introduction to social science theory, philosophy, and research methods, and it gives them a chance to discuss the research process with scholars in social science from around the Cambridge area.

Varieties of Capitalism and Strategies of Reform

This course surveys the basic variations among the economic and social regimes within advanced capitalism.  The course concentrates on the organization of business and labor, education and training systems, the welfare state, and finance and corporate governance.  The second part of the course moves from the realm of theory to the practical problem of reform. How, given these institutional preconditions, can policymakers best try to intervene in the economy to promote collective welfare?

The European Union: Politics and Public Policy

This course provides an introduction to the internal dynamics of policy-making in the European Union, focusing on the interaction of the union with its national and regional governments.  The course covers how various political actors exert power over the formal institutions of the EU through an examination of economic policy, social and redistributive policy, external foreign policies, and security policy.

Institution Building, Trust, and Effective Governance

This course examines empirical studies of “outbreaks of cooperation” that defy theoretical expectations of free-riding in collective action and over-exploitation of common pool resources. Material studied includes experimental findings relevant to the development of cooperative practices and case studies of environmental regulation, regulation at both the micro- and macro-economic levels, local politics, and institutions of international cooperation.