POLS425-23S2 (C) Semester Two 2023

Special Topic: Contemporary Issues in Public Policy and Governance

30 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 17 July 2023
End Date: Sunday, 12 November 2023
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 30 July 2023
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 1 October 2023

Description

Special Topic: Contemporary Issues in Public Policy and Governance

POLS425 offers an advanced examination of social policy issues from a comparative context. Students will examine a range of “wicked policy problems” (problems that are labelled as complex and hard to solve) and governance issues. Students will learn how and why issues are labelled as particularly challenging, analyze a range of responses that have been deemed as successes and failures, and hear from differently situated people in support or opposition of these responses, to understand and gain lessons for future and continuing policy analysts, decision-makers, and community leaders. Over the semester students will engage with key conceptual, methodological, and theoretical challenges that have sparked research seeking to evaluate, explain, and design effective public policy. Further, students will engage with critical literature which unpacks and troubles the language and assumptions of wicked problem literature and discussions, challenges mainstream policy approaches, and seeks alternative futures. Importantly, this course will not only focus on disparity and discusses examples of policy that are embraced by communities as successes.

Learning Outcomes

1. Critically engage with conceptual, methodological, and theoretical challenges in policy work;

2. Master the concepts of wicked problems and dimensions of policy success and failure;

3. Adeptly discuss how colonialism is interwoven with policy-making in a comparative context;

4. Develop and deliver a professional policy presentation to peers;

5. Conduct policy research and issue analysis and write a professional policy report;

6. Demonstrate critical thinking through the application of policy tools and concepts and during
    seminar.

Prerequisites

Subject to approval of the Head of School.

Course Coordinator

For further information see Language, Social and Political Sciences Head of Department

The course coordinator is Lin Mussell, Political Science and International Relations

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Final exam 30%
Participation 20% Throughout the semester
Presentation 10 Oct 2023 20%
Written assessment 17 Oct 2023 30% 3,000 words

Textbooks / Resources

Reading materials will be available on Learn and at the university library. We will use the following books in this course:

Head, B. (2022). Wicked Problems in Public Policy. Palgrave. Open Access: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/53360/1/978-3-030-94580-0.pdf.

Luetjens, J., Mintrom, M., & Hart, P. (Eds.). (2019). Successful Public Policy: Lessons from Australia and New Zealand. ANU Press. Open Access: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/d8aaf8e8-8792-46d2-9456-ed3f2a086359/succesful.pdf.

Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd Edition. Bloomsbury. Available online through the UC Library.

Optional:

Chrisinger, D. (2022). Public Policy Writing that Matters. John Hopkins University Press. Print copy available through the UC Library.

Hassall, G. (2020). Government and Public Policy in the Pacific Islands. Emerald Publishing. Available online through the UC Library.

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,990.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Language, Social and Political Sciences .

All POLS425 Occurrences

  • POLS425-23S2 (C) Semester Two 2023
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