POLICY-MAKING ANALYSIS

In the academic year 2010-2011 this course will not be offered.

Course Outline

By building on the tradition of classical policy-making analysis (H. Simon. C. Lindblom, A. O. Hirschman and many other scholars), the course will introduce the class to the analytical concepts and tools necessary to analyse the concrete making of economic (and public) policy in a democratic society. To discuss the cognitive, moral and epistemological questions involved in the fundamental issue of 'rationality' in public (and economic) policies will be the focus of the course.

Calendary

1. Procedural rationality versus formal rationality in economics

2. Governments as organisations: institutional design and self-organisation

3. Learning in the policy-making process

4. Communication, learning and the making of economic policies in a democratic society

5. Economic theories and models of policies' effects in the policy-making process

6. Types of economic policies and 'political rationality'

7. The moral foundations of economic policy

8. The use of reason in the making of economic policy

Readings

1. Meny Y. e Thoenig J.-C. (2003), Le politiche pubbliche, Il Mulino, Bologna.

2. Calafati A. (2008), Come pensano i governi? I fondamenti istituzionali delle politiche pubbliche, dispensa.