Introduction to Public Policy

Course Type	Course Code	No. Of Credits
Discipline Core	SPG2PP401	4

Semester and Year Offered: Semester 1 (Monsoon Semester)

Course Coordinator and Team: Ekta Singh & Partha Saha

Email of course coordinators: ekta@aud.ac.in, partha@aud.ac.in

Pre-requisites: None

Aim: This course is aimed at giving foundational knowledge and orientation to students in public policy by introducing key concepts and theories of the field and to equip students to critically assess current trends and issues in public policy.

Course Outcomes:

Have an in-depth understanding of the concepts, theories and evolution of the field of public policy
To develop a perspective to systematically evaluate and understand topical debates about policies and to situate them within the broader context
Have the ability to construct Log Frame while designing a programme
Basic understanding of how Game Theory can be applied in Policy Making

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

This course consists of six modules.

Module 1: Philosophical Foundations of Public Policy – Two weeks

The first module of the course will introduce students to the normative frameworks within social science that offer a basis to arrive at a notion of ‘just’ policy or what serves public interest given the trade-offs and value conflict. The module will lay emphasis on how issues of ethics and normative basis of policies have to be understood contextually.The topics that will be discussed in module one are:

Normative Frameworks: Political Theory and Public Policy, importance of contextual theorizations
Ethics and Public Policy: Indian Ethics and beyond, debates and dilemmas, ‘moral complexity’
Success/Failure of Public Policy: How do we evaluate success or failure of policy? Can policy be part of the ‘problem’? Is good policy un-implementable?

Module 2: Evolution of Public Policy – Two weeks

This module will introduce students to the field of public policy through a critical engagement with the key concepts, terminologies and typologies associated with public policy and the topics that will be discussed in this module are:

Historical Evolution: Evolution of the field to arrive at contemporary modern conception of public policy
Key concepts: Public(s), Policy, Public policy, Governance, public administration, New Public Management, Policy Instruments, Institutions
Typologies

Module 3: Public Policy Approaches – Three weeks

This module will discuss rational choice, political economy, institutional, policy network, discursive, and behavioural approaches to public policy. Further, the module will focus on policy learning and transfer as a lens through which to understand the policy process. The discussion will stress upon the need to see policy learning and transfer as political rooted in power to produce and use particular forms of knowledge and not as technical or objective. The topics that will be discussed in module three are:

Approaches/Paradigms to studying public policy making: Rational Choice, Political economy, institutional, policy network, discursive and behavioral.
Theories of Public Policy making and Policy Change: Advocacy Coalition framework, bounded rationality and multiple streams framework (Garbage Can models), Punctuated Equilibirium theory, Systems theory, Diffusion theory
Politics of Policy Learning and Transfer: policy diffusion, convergence

Module 4: Programme Design – Two weeks

In this module the basic steps involved in designing a programme will be discussed through different national and international examples. The topics that will be discussed in module five are:

Need assessment & stakeholder consultation
Programme theory
Analyzing programme context
Analyzing merit, worth, value of a programme
Logical frame of a programme

Module 5: Conflict and Cooperation – Three weeks

In Public Policy it is quite common to come across policies and programmes which despite being designed following the necessary steps, fail to deliver the desired output. One of the important reasons for this mis-match between expectation and output is coordination failure. Our quest for Public Policy is quite often nothing but dealing with hundreds of such coordination failures. This module will adopt a game theoretic approach in analysis of conflict and cooperation in policy makng. The topics that will be discussed in module four are:

Payoff Matrix of a Game
Nash Equilibrium
Prisoner’s Dilemma

Module 6: Collective Action in Public Policy – Two weeks

In Public Policy, collective action is an important approach to reduce coordination failure particularly in developing countries like India where coordination across different levels of government and people’s representatives along with other stakeholders is crucial to achieve desired output. The topics that will be covered in this module are:

Approaches to collective action
Collective action and welfare State
Different types of collective action problem
Collective action and local governance

Assessment Details with weights:

There will be two assessments (50 per cent weight in each) which will be written examination in classroom.

Assessment 1 – 50%

In-Class descriptive analytical test or Take Home Assignment (with Individual Presentation) to gauge students understanding of concepts and theories and their application to real world policy issues.

Assessment 2 – 50%

In class written examination based on basic application of game theory, designing a hypothetical problem (based on some issue) and constructing Log Frame of the hypothetical programme, and various approaches to collective action.

Reading List:

Mahajan, Gurpreet (2013). “Indian Political Theory: beyond cultural essentialism” in India-Political Ideas and the Making of a Democratic Discourse (Zed Books: London and New York).
Chaudhuri, Maitrayee and Manish Thakur (2019). “Introduction” in Doing Theory: Locations, Hierarchies, and Disjunctures, Orient Blackswan..
Mesquita, E. B. (2016). Political economy for Public Policy, Princeton University Press [chapter-1 ‘Normative Frameworks’,]
Howard, Jeffrey (2019). “The Public Role of Ethics and Public Policy” in Annabele Lever and Andrei Poama ed. The Routledge Handbook of Public Policy, Routledge: London and NewYork.
McConnell (2010). ‘Policy Success, Policy Failure and Grey Areas In-Between’, Journal of Public Policy, 30 (3).
Smith, Kevin B. and Christopher Larimer (2013). The Public Policy Theory Primer, Boulder CO: Westview Press [Chapter 1: “Public Policy as a Concept and a Field (or Fields) of study”]
Banerjee, Prathama (2020). ‘Introduction’ in Elementary Aspects of the Political- Histories from the Global South, Duke University Press.
David Levi-Faur ed. (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Governance, Oxford University Press [Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 14].
Dye, Thomas (2017). Understanding Public Policy, Pearson.
Birkland, Thomas (2019). An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public Policy Making. New York, NY: Routledge.
Wilder, Matt (2015). “What is a Policy Paradigm? Overcoming Epistemological hurdles in Cross-Disciplinary Conceptual Adaptation” in John Hogan and Michael Howlett ed. Policy Paradigms in Theory and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan.
Peters, Guy and Phillip Zittoun (2016). Contemporary Approaches to Public Policy: Theories, Controversies and Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan.
Cairney, Paul (2020). Understanding Public Policy: Theories and Issues, Red Globe Press.
Howlett, M., Mukherjee, I. (2018), “Handbook of Policy Design”, Routledge, New York. [Chs 1, 2, 5]
Peters, B, G., Fontaine, G. (2022), “Policy Design”, Edward Elgar, UK. [Chs 1, 2, 4]
Varian, H, R. (2010), “Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach”, W. W. Norton & Company, New York. {Chapters 28 and 29}
Mesquita, E. B. (2016). Political economy for Public Policy, Princeton University Press [chapters 5 and 7]
Schutz, A., Sandy, M, G. (2011), “Collective Action for Social Change”, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Ferguson, W, D. (2020), “The Political Economy of Collective Action, Inequality and Development”, Stanford University Press, California. [Chapters 1, 2, 3]
Vanni, F. (2014), “Agriculture and Public Goods: The Role of Collective Action”, Springer, New York. [Chapters 2, 3, 6]

ADDITIONAL REFERENCE:

A. Klimczuk (2015). “Public Policy: Ethics”, in J. D. Wright (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 580–585.
Wolff, Jonathan (2020). “The Free Market” in Ethics and Public Policy: A Philosophical Inquiry, Routledge.
Cairney, Paul (2021). The Politics of Policy Analysis, Palgrave Macmillan.
Gibbons, R. (2010), “A Primer in Game Theory”, Prentice Hall, New York. {Chapters 1 and 2}.
Nkrumah, Y., Mensah, J. (eds). (2014), “Accelerating Health Reforms through Collective Action: Experience from East Africa”, World Bank, Washington D C.