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.
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.
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?
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.
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