SP418      Half Unit
Global Social Policy and International Organizations

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

What do the Catholic Church, Bill and Melissa Gates, UNICEF and the World Bank have in common? They are in one way or another involved in social policy that goes beyond the nation state. Policy could be seen as the exercise of political power and this political power has often been concentrated within the nation state. Far from the traditional study of policy this includes the effect of globalization on a variety of actors in social policy. This course examines how globalization has changed the way we perceive areas such as health, education, social care and other areas that concern social citizenship. The course examines the international policy environment, particularly intergovernmental organisations; bilateral and multilateral aid agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which influence the social policy environment in developing countries. The impact of the inter-governmental policy process on policy outcomes is examined. The same goes for religious groups, social movements and corporations that all play a role in global social policy. The main goal of the course is not only to open up the understanding of social policy and globalization but also to show the complexity of goals and actors of social policy. It is expected that the students will devote considerable time to reading and preparing for the seminars.

15 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of 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 Winter Term Week 5

Students will write a long essay as their formative work for this course.

A detailed reading list will be presented at the beginning of the term. Some introductory texts include:

• B Deacon Global Social Policy and Governance. Sage (2007);
• R. Baldwin The Great Convergence: Information Technology and The New Globalization. Belnap (2017);
• H. Seckinelgin The politics of Global AIDS: Institutionalization of Solidarity, Exclsion of Context. Springer (2017) ;
• I. Gonzalez-Ricoy and A. Gossies, Institutions for Future Generations. OUP (2016);
• R Mishra, Globalisation and the Welfare State, Edward Elgar (1999);
• D Nayyar, Governing Globalization: Issues and Institutions, OUP (2002);
• V S Peterson & A S Runyan, Global Gender Issues, Westview Press (1993).
• M. Callon, P. Lascoumes, and Y. Barthe, Acting in an Uncertain World. The MIT Press (2009).
• D. Carpenter, Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA. Princeton (2010).

Exam (90%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Course participation (10%)