SP100      One Unit
Understanding International Social and Public Policy

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The course introduces students to the study and practice of international social and public policy. It considers how societies organise to address social needs, with reference to academic and policy debates across the so-called global North and South.

In the first half of the course (Autumn Term), you will develop your understanding of how welfare systems have developed and of the institutions and actors involved in different contexts across the world, including the state, market, civil society and families.

In the second half (Winter Term), you will consider the challenge of inequality and how different approaches in social policy, involving those institutions and actors, can redress or reinforce inequalities.

11 hours of lectures and 13.5 hours of classes in the Autumn Term.
10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of classes in the Winter Term.

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

All teaching will be in accordance with the LSE Academic Code which specifies a "minimum of two hours taught contact time per week when the course is running in the Autumn Term (AT) and/or Winter Term (WT)". Social Policy courses are predominantly taught through a combination of in-person lectures and in-person classes/seminars. Further information will be provided by the Course Convenor in the first lecture of the course.

Essay in Autumn Term Week 7

Essay in Winter Term Week 3

Students are expected to participate actively in the course learning activities and to complete two formative essays.

Artaraz, K. and Hill, M. (2016) Global Social Policy: Themes, Issues and Actors. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Daly, M. (2011) Welfare. Cambridge: Polity.

Garland, D. (2016) The Welfare State: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kabeer, N., Cook, S. (2000) ‘Revisioning social policy in the South: challenges and concepts’, IDS Bulletin, 31: 4, 1-18.

Lewis, D. (2017) ‘Should we pay more attention to South-North learning?’, Human Service Organisations: Management, Leadership and Governance, 41: 4, 327-331.

Ikemura Amaral, A., Jones, G., Nogueira, M. (2020) 'Brazil's so-called 'invisibles' will need more than resilience to redress the unequal impacts of COVID-19 | LSE Latin America and Caribbean', LSE blogs https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2020/05/14/brazils-so-called-invisibles-will-need-more-than-resilience-to-redress-the-unequal-impacts-of-covid-19/

Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period

The course is assessed by an exam comprising two essay-based answers.