The course critically explores the main European policy challenges (see infra), and is designed and taught jointly by a team of professors from the different partners of the alliance. The course will be delivered synchronously across all the campuses of the CIVICA consortium as a series of live on-line lectures, integrated with local activities. On top of lectures, the course spurs students to work in teams across countries and disciplines, with the aim of completing a final capstone project assignment related to specific and concrete policy challenges. Lectures will start in Fall 2021, together with the capstone project.
CIVICA is an alliance composed of Bocconi University (Italy), Central European University (Austria and Hungary), European University Institute (Florence), Hertie School (Germany), National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Romania), Sciences Po (France), Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden), and The London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom).
Learning Outcomes
While experiencing the unique opportunity of having direct interaction with some of the top scholars on policy areas across different countries and institutions, at the end of the course students will be able to:
1. Outline and critically appraise challenging areas of policy-making facing the European Union in the coming years
2. Apply key concepts and insights from the relevant theoretical literatures to the investigation of contemporary European policy challenges.
3. Explain and evaluate the dynamics which characterize European Union policy responses with a particular focus on responses in times of crisis
4. Identify and analyze the main economic, political and societal challenges posed by globalization, climate change, the digital transition and consider the evolution of the political systems within the European Union in response to these challenges
5. Working in groups, develop and propose in written and oral form evidence-based policy solutions to EU-relevant policy problems
Professional Skills
As students will be in direct contact with professors and experts working on different policy-challenges within different European institutions, they will be able to acquire different professional skills required to : 1. Assess an existing policy focused on a specific issue ;
2. Write a policy paper, a policy brief, and create an interesting presentation to summarize the added value of these documents ;
3. Be able to address solutions to experts and learn from their feedbacks in order to improve the suggested policies.
2. A continuous assessment based on the activities proposed during the Tutorial hours : 30% of the final grade. These activities will be mainly focused on Methodological insights.
3. A Capstone project (Group work) built throughout the semester and submitted on December 15th : 40% of the final grade. Groups will be composed of 5 to 6 students, from different institutions, they will choose a specific Policy-Challenge and work on analyzing it from different perspectives under the supervision of the instructor and the TA.
A policy paper will be submitted, along with a policy brief and a methodological appendix in order to frame the new answer suggested by students to different institutions dealing with the Challenge. Before final submission, an oral presentation will be prepared by students, and a debate will follow the presentation, leading to possible suggestions to improve the policy paper.
More targeted feedbacks on specific components of the Capstone projects will be provided during the two conclusive sessions – on November 24th and December 1st, before final submission on December 15th.