SP112      One Unit
Politics of Social Policy Making

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Understanding the political dynamics behind policy decisions is crucial, as the most effective solutions are often sidelined in favor of politically expedient ones. Fostering the ability to identify and navigate these political realities is therefore essential for those aiming to drive meaningful change in an imperfect world.
The course introduces students to the way in which social and public policies are developed. It aims to provide tools to understand how policies are produced through political disagreement and negotiations and how policies reflect different needs and problems voiced by groups in societies. It focuses on the ways in which policy processes and decision making can be analysed. The course focuses on different models that are used in the analyses of policy processes in different international contexts.
Furthermore, it links different analytical approaches to policy processes with political considerations of how political problems are framed and how policy goals are established. The course looks at these issues from the perspective of different actors and the ways in which different actors interact with each other within policy processes. The course brings together analytical frameworks for policy processes with empirical problems (cases). The course enables students to understand that policy processes are both about understanding society and shaping it.
Finally, it introduces students to the various policy actors, including international actors and how these actors work together within socio-political and economic constraints. It also highlights the importance of identifying and understanding the different value positions and the associated negotiations that underwrite policy processes.

20 hours of lectures and 15 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 8

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the AT.

Students will have a 400 word formative assignment due in Autumn Term, where students will outline how they would apply one of the theoretical approaches discussed in the course to a specific policy issue. This serves as practice for the subsequent summative assessments.

Cairney, Paul (2019) Understanding Public Policy: Theories and Issues 2nd Edition. London: Bloomsbury

Bacchi, Carol (2009) Analysing Policy: What's the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education

Stone, Deborah (2012) Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making. NY: Norton.

Bueno de Mesquita, Ethan (2017) Political Economy for Public Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ostrom, Elinor (2015) Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. London: CUP.

Exam (80%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Essay (20%, 1000 words) in Winter Term Week 4

Students will sit a 3 hour in-person Exam in the Spring term. Students must answer 2 questions from a choice of 8 (one question from section A and one from Section B). The recommended word count is 2400 (approximately 1200 per question).