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, moral issues, 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. A majority of sessions will focus on one issue, with one guest speaker invited to present their current research.

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Each session will be organized around a lecture, class discussions on readings and insights about course assignments. All students are expected to read assigned readings before the course.

Course validation will take place as follow:

Course validation will take place as follow:

• A group of three students will be asked to select one theme among the seveproposed sessions with guest speakers. (50% of final grade).
• Each student will be asked individually to deliver a final paper focused on a specific policy and based on a book review or a selection of six articles from academic journals (50% of final grade).

One reading (journal article / book chapter) per week