Suspended in 2025/26
PP411A      Half Unit
Political Entrepreneurship

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This course will offer a unique opportunity to students who have a passion for politics and don’t know where to direct it. In the last decade electoral start-ups, new forms of activism, and disruptive political technologies have completely reshaped the international political landscape. Having an impact through politics today requires an understanding of entrepreneurship and of digital technologies, and the mastery of the basic unit of politics: electoral campaigning.

Throughout the course, students will be introduced to frameworks drawn from multiple disciplines ranging from management to political science, from communication to grassroots organizing, from data analytics to leadership, enabling them to understand how modern politics works and what it takes to enter the political arena. The students will draw from first-hand examples of the most disruptive political endeavours of the decade, and will readily apply their learnings to a campaign of their choosing, for which they will be asked to craft a strategy memo and an action plan, dedicating a special focus on the use of data and new technologies.

30 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Students will be expected to produce a short, 2-page business memo to present the campaign they chose, and to flag any potential barriers to the delivery of their final campaign strategy memo. 

• McNamara, M - The political campaign desk reference.
• Haidt, J - The righteous mind
• Westen, D - The political brain
• Cialdini, R.B. - Influence: the psychology of persuasion
• Issenberg, S - The victory lab
• Ignatieff, M - Fire and ashes
• Mayer-Schoneberger, V. and Cukier, K. - Big Data
• Lindstrom, M - Small Data
• Ganz, M - Leading change
• McAlevey, J - No shortcuts

Course participation (10%)

Memo (60%, 3000 words)

Project (30%)

Project (30%): a short memo highlighting early elements of campaign strategy, including targeting, staffing and tasks timeline.Memo (60%): a strategy memo of approximately 5,000 words, where students outline the main features of their campaign strategy, expanding on the first memo and including messaging, field, and digitalThese two assessments and the formative assessment will revolve around a political campaign of the student's choosing.