{"id":22221,"date":"2020-01-13T11:54:28","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T16:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=22221"},"modified":"2020-01-13T11:54:30","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T16:54:30","slug":"syllabus-of-a-public-policy-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=22221","title":{"rendered":"syllabus of a public policy course"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m teaching Public Policy Analysis to undergraduate this spring–a new course. I’ve pasted the working syllabus (minus the grading rubric, rules about technology, and other practicalities) below. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome. I don’t think this design is a very unusual, but it may lean more toward institutional analysis (per Elinor Ostrom) than is common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Objectives<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To learn to analyze institutions and develop strategies that improve the world by changing these institutions or creating new ones. A good strategy must be just <\/em>(which requires normative argument), effective<\/em>, and politically viable<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summary of Content<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The class will first investigate one policy question together. That question is: Which students should attend which k-12 schools in the USA, and who should decide that matter? Concrete policy options include mandatory assignment to neighborhood public schools, school choice, charter schools, vouchers, etc. Every student will write a short paper on that topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each student will then select one policy issue and write three 5-7-page essays that connect to produce one policy memo on that issue. As students conduct research for their individual papers, in class, we will discuss methods and theories of policy analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our overall framework will the Institutional Analysis and Design (IAD) framework developed by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues. We will use it both for the k-12 school example and for each student\u2019s individual project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"IAD<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Working with this framework, we will pose these questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. What is the institution? What is its name? How would you define it uniquely, and which people, resources, locations, etc. does it involve?<\/li>
  2. What problem or set of problems interests you about it? This problem may be a failure (the institution doesn\u2019t yield the intended results) or an injustice (it has bad<\/em> results), or it could be the intellectual problem posed by its success: why does this institution work and can we replicate it?<\/li>
  3. What other institutions are closely related to it, and how?<\/li>
  4. Which institutional form(s) does it reflect, e.g., a government, a firm, a market, a network, an association, a community?<\/li>
  5. What are important relevant biophysical conditions? What natural resources does it use, and which natural processes come into play? What characteristics of these resources and processes are relevant to the institution: e.g., scarcity, fragility, adaptability, ability to reproduce and grow, interdependence, tendency to move?<\/li>
  6. What are important technological conditions, where \u201ctechnology\u201d means the relevant affordances and limitations that have been created\u2013or will predictably be created\u2013by human beings?<\/li>
  7. What cultural meanings (in the sense of Geertz 1973) are involved? Are these meanings shared or disputed?<\/li>
  8. To what extent can we detect wholes, rhythms, hierarchies, and networks (Links to an external site.)<\/a> in the institution (C. Levine 2015)? How do these forms interrelate?<\/li>
  9. What official, formal, usually written rules govern the institution? What are its rules-in-use? (These may diverge from the official rules.)<\/li>
  10. Are the rules grounded  (Links to an external site.)<\/a>in phenomena beyond the institution? For instance, an institution might use a currency whose value is determined by other institutions. Tufts runs on an academic calendar related to the solar calendar, which is grounded in the motion of the earth. (Grounding is different from causation.)<\/li>
  11. What goods are relevant? Who has which kinds of ownership over which goods? Are the goods subtractable? Are they excludable?<\/li>
  12. Who are the relevant actors?<\/li>
  13. What choices confront each actor? What does each actor know about the available choices?<\/li>
  14. What does each actor value, and why?<\/li>
  15. Under what conditions do the actors choose (e.g., with or without discussion, once or repeatedly, simultaneously or in turn, with or without knowledge of what the others are choosing)?<\/li>
  16. What are the consequences of the most important or most likely combinations of choices made by all the actors?<\/li>
  17. Are these consequences desired by the actors?<\/li>
  18. Are these outcomes desired by people who are not<\/em> among the actors?<\/li>
  19. Are the outcomes fair or just by various normative criteria?<\/li>
  20. Are they sustainable\u2013meaning a) literally repeatable many times, and\/or b) good for nature?<\/li>
  21. How do the outcomes affect the issues raised in questions 1-15? In other words, do the outcomes of the institution change the institution itself, in a feedback loop?<\/li>
  22. What deliberate changes in institutional forms (4), technologies (6), meanings (7), rules (9-10), or values (13) would produce preferable outcomes according to the criteria raised in questions 18-20? <\/li>
  23. How can we go about altering the institution in the light of 22?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Book to purchase<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Sigal R. Ben-Porath and Michael C. Johanek, Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice is Really About<\/em> (University of Chicago Press, 2019)<\/li>
    2. Robert Pondiscio, How The Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice<\/em> (Avery 2019)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      These will be in the bookstore but you are welcome to purchase electronic versions instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Criteria for assessing class participation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      1. Attendance. <\/li>
      2. Engaging in a discussion that is informed by the assigned texts. <\/li>
      3. Focusing on the topic and the texts, which does not preclude drawing connections beyond them.<\/li>
      4. Being responsive to other students. Responsiveness needn\u2019t always be immediate, verbal, or occur within the class discussion itself.<\/li>
      5. Building on others\u2019 contributions, and sometimes making links among different people\u2019s contributions or between what they have said and the text.<\/li>
      6. Demonstrating genuine respect for the others, where respect does not require agreement. In fact, sometimes respect requires explicit disagreement<\/em> because you take the other person\u2019s ideas seriously.<\/li>
      7. Taking risks, trying out ideas that you don\u2019t necessarily endorse, and asking questions that might be perceived as naive or uninformed.<\/li>
      8. Seeking truth or clarity or insight (instead of other objectives).<\/li>
      9. Exercising freedom of speech along with a degree of tact and concern for the other people.<\/li>
      10. Demonstrating responsibility for the other students\u2019 learning in what you say (and occasionally by a decision not to speak).<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

        Wed. Jan 15<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Introductions. Some preliminary discussion of school choice based on our own experiences<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Part I: School Choice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Wednesday, January 22<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        The original argument for choice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n