F1GD 4405 - Public Policy: Strategy, Policy Making Process, Implementation and Evaluation

***UPDATED for 2024/25***

This course will be focused on the main steps of a public policy, from inception to evaluation. Even though it will provide the students with some basic methodological requirements, it doesn't aim at being theoretical, but mostly concrete and practical Since the previous years, the program has been partially re-framed to better comprehend the international affairs which is the key purpose of the Master. Some of the sessions will specifically focus on those issues. It will address among others the following issues:

- Inception, elaboration of a public strategy (how do define a vision and to elaborate a strategy especially in the international domain? How to include all the stakeholders in the process? How to make policy-making successful?)

- What is a public policy? How to define it? Why is this definition so conflicting?

- How to elaborate a diagnosis? What are the relevant indicators related to this?

- How to make the people participate in the elaboration of a public policy?

- Strategy and perspective: How to build scenarios?

- Evaluation of the public policies: main concepts, main tools, which organization? Which limits? The main criteria to assess the quality of an evaluation. - Among some specific topics tackled during the course, there will be notably the following: decision-making process and the Russian war against Ukraine, the scenarios for the future of the EU, the strategy of influence, the main findings related to public policy of the Covid-19 crisis, the West and the “Global South”.

Learning Outcomes

1. Comprehensive understanding of the policy-making process, especially in the international field.

2. Methodology related to indicators-building.

3. Principles and methodology of the evaluation of a public policy.

4. Methodology of scenarios.

5. Main requirements for writing a policy paper focused on both in-depth analysis of a public policy and practical recommendations.

Professional Skills

Ability to build accurately the design of a public policy, to create a framework for evaluation and to suggest scenarios to policy-makers.

Capability to jump from a diagnostic and an analysis of a public policy, based on strong methodological bases, to concrete and implementable proposals for a senior offical of a government or international organization.

Nicolas TENZER

Séminaire

English

- In Class Presence: 2 hours a week / 24 hours a semester

- Reading and Preparation for Class: 1 hour a week / 12 hours a semester

- Research and Preparation for Group Work: 12 hours in March/April (second assignment)

- Research and Writing for Individual Assessments: 20 hours in February (first assignment)

- Reading materials provided by the professor and self-appropriation: 1.5 hour a week.

Interest for policy making process, ability to think strategically, capacity to deal with concrete issues with a non purely academic theoretical background.

Spring 2024-2025

Participation during the class and workshops in common (10% of the grade) and mostly two written assignments at home (individual for the first one, in group of 3 or 4 students for the second with indication of the redactors of each part)

Approximately 24 hours for each assignment:

The first assignment will count for 50% in the final grade and will be a policy paper (about 2,500 words)

The second assignment, that must be made in group of 3 or 4, 40%. It will be either a note or a power-point presentation on a public policy related issue.

Each student (or group for the second assignment) will receive a detailed individual evaluation for his/her written assignment at the latest one month after. The main criteria for grading are the following: quality of argumentation, specifics, ability to think by oneself, quality of the writing, critical thinking, in-depth analysis, comprehensiveness of the issues tackled in the assignment, subtlety, etc.