Programme

PhD

Term

I

Academic Year

2021-22

Course title

Public Policy

Area

Public Systems

Credits

1.50

Instructor(s)

Prof. Rama Mohan Turaga, Prof. Ankur Sarin

Course Description & Objectives

Policy Science is relatively new as a distinct discipline, emerging in the United States and Europe in the post WWII period, mainly through the focus given by students of politics to the relationship between government, citizens and society. It has developed through a range of methods and approaches initially borrowed from other social sciences (such as law, sociology, political science, linguistics, psychology, organizational behavior, and economics) and has worked to carve its unique position through its own development of epistemological concerns, theories of human behavior and sets of methodologies, as well as by sheer empirical experience (in areas as diverse as welfare, economic development, decentralized governance, educational planning, healthcare, immigration, disaster management, affirmative action, environment and climate, transportation, energy, employment, to name a few) of trials and errors of the last 60 years. As part of that disciplinary learning, it has further integrated both normative and empirical concerns in policy analysis in providing a comprehensive and grounded discipline. This course starts as an advanced introduction to the study of public policy, and develops a critical perspective to enable the understanding how policy knowledge is constituted and generated in a variety of spheres. It is geared towards an interrogation of the way in which specific public policies are socially constructed to achieve some politically valued ends. The course is not about developing formula based solutions to policy problems or articulating the one best solution in any policy 'sector'. It is aimed at doctoral students and those who have an interest in critical assessments of policy processes who wish to make a scholarly contribution to the understanding of public policy in a democratic society.