Questions of how societies manage common policy problems such as how to encourage economic growth, how to ensure the sustainability of natural resources, how to design institutions to ensure good governance, now and into the future, occupy the minds of policy makers worldwide. In this course, we investigate such challenges from a disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspective.

In this course students will not only learn about the key analytic frameworks derived from economics, political science, and environmental management used to consider these challenges, they will also participate in multidisciplinary workshops to consider their application to a series of case studies. This offers students a unique cross disciplinary opportunity to apply theory to practice and develop their applied policy skills.

On successful completion of the course students will have:

• Developed disciplinary and cross-disciplinary understanding of major challenges facing policymakers;
• Understood key analytic frameworks, techniques and insights from economics, environmental management, and political science; and
• Worked effectively in multidisciplinary teams to analyse major policy problems

Students must complete four (4) case study papers - one per workshop, and a final integrative one. These papers provide a link between theory and practice allowing students to demonstrate not only an understanding of key frameworks, techniques and insights, and key challenges facing policy makers, but also how they might go about addressing them.  Each paper is worth 25% of the overall grade for this course.The final paper provides the opportunity for students to demonstrate that they have understood key approaches from each discipline, the power of combining these analytically, and how this helps us to understand the challenges faced by policymakers.

Delivery Mode:  The course is offered in semester 1, 2010 and it involves a mixture of lectures (10) and case study workshops (3). Lectures will provide students with the opportunity to learn about key analytic models from subject experts. Smaller case workshops provide the opportunity to apply these to practice. All students will be assigned to a case workshop and a smaller cross-disciplinary syndicate group.