Introduction to Public Policy and Policy Analysis

How do governments address real-world problems such as health crises, climate change, and social inequity? Public policy broadly refers to government goals, decisions, and actions/inactions made on behalf of the public to address perceived issues, and policy analysis entails examining and evaluating the available options. This course introduces students to public policy and policy analysis, with an overview of power and rationality, colonialism, institutions, theories of policy change, citizen participation, policy learning, and more. Over the term we will devote particular focus to Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and small pacific states. This course is part of the public policy subdiscipline of the Political Science degree, is co-coded with Human Services, and is also relevant to a number of other degrees across the university.