Public Policy Evaluation

Full course description

This course provides students with an academic and at the same time practical and ‘hands on’ approach to the study of public policy and more in particular, to the professional practice of policy analysis and evaluation. Public policies can be described as “a course of government action or inaction in response to public problems”  such as insufficient access to health care or education, environmental degradation, threats to workplace safety, corruption, overcrowded highways or air pollution (Kraft and Furlong 2010:5). Problems range from relatively simple to highly complex and manifest from the local to the national or global levels. They can reflect conflicts over causes, solutions, problem definitions as well as over fundamental human values. Decision-makers that take final decisions on these issues need to be informed by sound evidence based policy analysis and evaluation that has carefully weighted, crafted, prescribed and evaluated the policy alternatives. This is important as the decisions taken do not only affect people’s lives, but also influence society’s key values.  It is the task of the policy analyst / evaluator to provide sound evidence, analysis and advice. To acquaint students with, and prepare them for such undertakings, this course is designed to foster critical thinking and understanding about public policy and possible alternative courses of action by deliberating and analyzing the key concepts, models, approaches and methods of policy analysis & evaluation, and practicing some of its basic skills.   

In the first week of the course students explore what policy analysis & evaluation actually is. It intends to shed light on the role of power, politics, institutions and actors in the policy making process. Subsequently, in the second week the art of problem structuring is explored. In the third week students will be introduced to working with evaluative criteria and choosing policy options for formulating policy advices. With the knowledge gained in these first three weeks students will work in small groups to prepare and present a ‘hands on’ a policy advice on a real life country case. Finally, just before the midterm exam, students are introduced to two frequently used methods of policy analysis and evaluation: cost benefit and cost effectiveness analysis. The midterm exam consists of two parts: an individually written policy memorandum on a given topic (part 1) and, on the basis of that memorandum, a team role play (part 2 of midterm). After the midterm the focus shifts from having gained the basic knowledge for policy analysis and evaluation (problem structuring, stakeholder analysis, choosing evaluative criteria and using them to benchmark and weigh the different policy alternatives) to exploring policy evaluation approaches in more depth.  Students will be introduced to plan, process and outcome evaluations on the basis of the realist or theory-based evaluation approach.  They will work in small groups on another real life case to actually carry out and present a plan (and or) process evaluation themselves. Finally, ethical and accountability aspects of policy analysis and evaluation, as well as the role of the public in this process are explored.

The course is built around 6 cases (some spread over 2 tutorials) and 6 lectures by both academics and professional practitioners that share their knowledge and experiences with the students. This together with studying academic and policy literature as well as the ‘hands on’ work on evaluation cases, provide the main guidance for the student’s learning process in this policy analysis & evaluation course.