O0PP 2025 - Contemporary and Wicked Policy Issues. Exploring Topical Policies of our Time.

Sustainability, climate change, biotechnology, economic innovation, social and fiscal inequalities and injustice, public health, terrorism, migrations, digital policies are, among many, a few examples of contemporary public issues, sometimes called “wicked problems”. They are characterized by complexity, high uncertainty, controversy and divergence in viewpoints, debates on what are the best governance arrangements, and very often cut across organizational boundaries. These policies emphasize crucial issues of authority, democracy and power. They are also topical public policy problems of our time, challenging the classic way of knowing as well as (re)activating important epistemological and theoretical debates in the wide field of policy studies. Conceived as a research-seminar, this course examines a vast array of major contemporary policy issues whose effects on states and societies are of paramount importance. Each session will focus on one issue, with one guest speaker invited to present their current research.

Philippe BEZES,Charlotte HALPERN

Séminaire

English

None

Autumn 2021-2022

Course validation will take place in three steps. First, students (individually or in small groups of 2-3, depending on the number of participants) will be asked to select one theme among the ten proposed sessions. Second, each individual or group will be asked to lead the chosen session, including reading a few papers from the guest speaker, preparing questions and facilitating the debate with the rest of the group. Third, they will be asked to deliver a final paper including a limited literature review on the theme (10 articles max), a characterization of the issues and its related policies, an overview of how the theme has been approached academically as well as suggestions for future research.