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Public policy has made immense progress over last couple of decades. There has been a
continuous development over theoretical discourse and practices around public policy debate
and analysis. This course intends to comprehend some of the essential analytical concepts,
theories and analytical tools of policy analysis. Key questions for guiding this course are: Why do
we need public policy? What is the context in which policy decisions are needed and made? What
are the processes of public policies? Public policies are full of visions and promises. However, in
practice, there are inherent tensions and constraints that co-exist with visions in public policies.
This course will explore many of these paradoxes of public policy research by reviewing various
policies such as welfare, health care, labour market, foreign policy, national security, climate
change and environment, urbanisation, federalism, immigration, and inclusive citizenship.
- Public policy and policy analysis: Definition, nature, key concepts, context (economic,
social, political, governing, cultural), need for public policy.
- Actors and institutions: Role of government and governance, formal institutions,
Federalism, informal institutions and actors.
- Rationale for public policy: Income distribution and welfare programmes, taxation and
tax reform, market mechanisms, government failure and market failure, social security
measures, social assistance and social insurance, regulation.
- Theories and approaches to public policy: Welfarism; social choice theory; individual
interests and collective action; collective action failure; structural, political and
institutional theory; game-theory; cost-benefit analysis; cost-effectiveness analysis;
efficiency, equity, ethics and values
- Process of policy making: Agenda setting and framing, policy design, policy
formulation, roles and working with sources, rationales for public policy, market policies,
non-market policies, strategies, adoption, implementation, policy evaluation, limits of
policy making, policy change
- Birkland, Thomas A. (2011). An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models
of Public Policy Making. (3rd ed), UK: Routledge.
- Just, Richard E., Darrell L. Hueth & Andrew Schmitz. (2004). The Welfare Economics of
Public Policy: A Practical Approach to Project and Policy Evaluation, Cheltenham,,UK: Edward Elgar.
- Knill, Christoph & Jale Tosun. (2012). Public Policy: A New Introduction. Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan.
- Kraft, Michael E. & Furlong, Scott R. (2021). Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives
(7th Edition),Thousand Oaks: Sage.
- Lipsky, Michael. (2010), Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services.,
New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
- Mathur, Kuldeep. (2015). Public Policy and Politics in India: How Institutions Matter., New
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
- Moran, Michael, Martin Rein and Robert E. Goodin (Eds). (2006). The Oxford Handbook
of Public Policy., Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Stone, Deborah. (1984)., The Disabled State., Hampshire: Macmillan.
- Stone, Deborah. (2012). Palicy paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (3 rd Ed)., New
York: W.W. Norton & Company.
- Weimer, David L. & Aidan R. Vining. (2016). Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice., Oxon:
Routledge
- Winston, Clifford (2006). Government Failure versus Market Failure: Microeconomics Policy
Research and Government Performance., Washington, D.C.: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for
Regulatory Studies, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
