Dr Christine Cote

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Public Management and Governance. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course will be available to selected students on the MPA programmes.

The course will focus on forms of governance of services examining the shifting balance between government and markets. This includes study of quasi markets, vouchers, privatisation, Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) and Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs).  The course will examine different kinds of markets for hospitals, health insurers, schools, universities and water. It will consider governance against objectives of costs, equity and quality. It uses economic ideas of principal / agent problems, the economics of transaction costs and behavioural economics.  It also examines issues in international trade and public health.

15 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the LT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 piece of coursework in the LT.

A detailed essay plan on two pages with introduction, one key paragraph and conclusion written in full on the idea of quasi markets for either schools or hospitals with reference to Le Grand’s ideas of ‘knights’ and ‘knaves’.

Students will be introduced to extracts from classic works of leading scholars including: AO Hirschman. Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states. London: Harvard university press, 1970. O E Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies, The Free Press, 1975; O E Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets and Relational Contracting, New York, The Free Press, 1985; J Le Grand, The Other Invisible Hand: Delivering Public Services Through Choice and Competition, Princeton University Press, 2007; R H Thaler and C R Sunstein, Nudge, Penguin, 2009; G Roland. Privatization: Successes & Failures. Columbia University Press; 2013; Oliver A (ed) Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013; M Barber. How to run a government so that citizens benefit and taxpayers don't go crazy, Allen Lane, 2015.  Students will also examine published papers and extracts from official reports.

Essay (90%, 5000 words) in the ST.
Presentation (10%) in the LT.

An essay of 5,000 words critically examining governance of a service in the student’s own country (90%).

Presentations as a member of a seminar group in the weekly seminars (10%).