Course Description
Public policy implementation literature with emphasis given to the major substantive and methodological issues driving this emerging field of public policy analysis. Bureaucracy's role in policy process, implementation analysis, and theories and methods for studying policy implementation.
Athena Title
POLICY IMPLEMENT
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in POLS 7630
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
A great deal of importance happens between the enunciation of governmental intention and its impact, if any, on the world of action. Students and practitioners of policy, recognizing this point, have focused on the subject of policy implementation as a key to understanding--and perhaps influencing--the results of the policy process. This course is devoted to the subject of policy implementation: its literature, its concepts and frameworks, some of the major issues its study has highlighted, and its relevance to practice. The course is conducted as a seminar with several closely- related aims; to introduce participants to the literature of and major issues (conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and practical) implied by the subject; to encourage an assessment of the state of the field; and, to allow participants to delve more deeply into some more specialized aspects of this topic.
Topical Outline
I. Course introduction II. Implementation and the policy process: Public administration in disguise? III. Implementation structures: Intraorganizational settings and multiorganizational arrangements IV. Implementation processes: Frameworks, theories, and metaphors V. Implementation processes: Important clusters of variables VI. Methodological issues VII. Top-down and bottom-up approaches VIII. Moving beyond top-down and bottom-up approaches IX. Applying theory to practice