POLS6023: Introduction to Public Policy

POLS6023
Introduction to Public Policy
Lecturer: Dr Tim Hicks
Office Hours: TBA
Teaching: 10 hours of lectures, 10 hours of seminars
Credits: 0.5 Course Units/ 4 US Credits/ 7.5 ECTS Credits
Assessment: One 2,000 word essay (50%) and one exam (50%)
Essay Deadlines: Essay: Wednesday 25th March 2015, 2pm
Attendance: Attendance is compulsory at all lectures and seminars for which
students are timetabled. Attendance will be monitored and no
student will be entered for assessment unless they have attended
and pursued the module to the satisfaction of the department.

USEFUL LINKS
Lecture and Seminar Times:
Online Timetable at www.ucl.ac.uk/timetable

Extenuating Circumstances
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/intranet/ug/assessment/extenuating-circumstances

Penalties for Late Submission and Overlength Essays
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/intranet/ug/assessment/essays

Essay Submission Information
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/intranet/ug/assessment/essays

Essay Writing, Plagiarism and TurnItIn
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/intranet/ug/assessment/essays
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/current-students/guidelines/plagiarism
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/CitationPlagiarism.doc

Introduction to Public Policy
(POLS6023)
Lecturer
Dr Tim Hicks
Department of Political Science,
University College London
t.hicks@ucl.ac.uk
http://tim.hicks.me.uk/teaching/
Lectures/Seminars: Term 2 (2014/15), Wednesdays, 9am-11am
Office Hours: TBA

Document produced: July 16, 2014

Course Description

This course aims to introduce students to the process of public decision-making in modern democracies, and explains how decision-makers formulate and implement public decisions that have consequences for the everyday lives of citizens, such as over transport, energy or the environment.
The course sets out the main theories of decision-making, such as rational or boundedly rational,
and reviews the role of di.erent actors in the policy process as they seek to influence public policy.
Topics include the role of bureaucrats, politicians, and then case studies of implementation, such
as local employment policies. The context is decision-making in the countries of the European
Union and the USA.
On successful completion of this module students should have an understanding of:
. the basic features of the public policy process in 'developed democracies';
. the interplay between the different actors in the policy process;
. how policy-makers make policy decisions;
. how political factors relate to the policy process;
. how to critically read and evaluate social scientific arguments and evidence.

Lectures and Seminars
Each week there will be an introductory lecture followed by a seminar. Both will last about one
hour. The lectures will introduce students to many of the ideas and issues relating to the various
topics. The seminars will provide a forum for more focussed discussion. In each seminar, you
should expect to be ready to discuss all of the required readings. You are also very welcome to
raise issues from the further readings.

Assessment and Essay Deadline
The course is assessed on the basis of one essay and one exam, where each counts for 50% of
the overall mark. The essay must be a maximum of 2,000 words, excluding the bibliography.
Please include the word count at the top of the essay.
The deadline the essay Wednesday 25th March 2015, 2pm.
The essay question will be made available during the teaching term.
You will find useful guidance for writing and presenting essays on the SPP student website.
These guidelines are designed to help you, and you should read them carefully and do your
best to follow them. Good essays give clear and focused answers to the question asked, they
have clear structures, and they will be adequately and appropriately referenced. They do not
provide a vague and unstructured discussion of the topic. Plagiarism is taken extremely seriously
and can disqualify you from the course (for details of what constitutes plagiarism see http:
//www.ucl.ac.uk/current-students/guidelines/plagiarism). If you are in doubt about any
of this, ask the tutor.

Reading for the Module
The list that follows is organised by lecture topic. You are not expected to read everything on
the list, but you should do some reading each week and you should come prepared to discuss
what you have read with others in the class. To prepare for the class you should at least read the
items listed in the ‘required’ reading. In fact you should aim to spend around five hours reading
for the class each week. On top of this, you should pursue any extra reading you will need to do
for your essays.
There are many general textbook treatments that provide an introduction to the study of
public policy. Three that you may find useful to browse are:
• Parsons, Wayne (1995). Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy
Analysis. Edward Elgar
• John, Peter (2012). Analyzing Public Policy. 2nd ed. Abingdon, UK: Routledge
• Sabatier, Paul A., ed. (2007). Theories of the Policy Process. 3rd ed. Westview Press.
url: http://tinyurl.com/abvowfo

I have assigned ‘required’ readings from Parsons (1995) for various topics, so you may find that
particularly useful to have a copy of. The text by the Department’s own Peter John (2012) is,
of course, highly recommended. Sabatier (2007) is an edited volume that has chapters providing
overviews of various approaches to studying public policy from leading practitioners of those
approaches.
Most of the reading is available in the UCL library, although you may find only limited copies.
The Senate House and LSE libraries may also be of use to you. Most of the journals from which
articles are recommended are available online. Wherever possible, directly in the reading list, I
have provided URLs that link directly to copies of the respective journal articles. Note that you
may need to connect to some of these linked-to services from within the UCL network — or use
o↵-campus authentication — to gain access. These links are intended to provide a convenient
way for you to access the readings.
One potential downside to electronic journals is that they do not foster the browsing around
issues and volumes that comes with the hard copies of journals. I very much encourage you
to do this kind of browsing — via web sites or hard copies, as you prefer. This is likely to be
particularly helpful when preparing for essays.

Note that readings marked with * may be more challenging. They may be helpful to you for
increasing your understanding of the intuition of arguments, but do not worry about difficulties
 that you may have understanding mathematical or statistical material in these papers.