Academic Interview – IR227: Politics of Change: Governing Social Transformation

From the climate crisis to rapid advances in artificial intelligence, societies today are facing multiple transformations at once. But how do governments and institutions actually respond to changes of this scale? In this academic interview, we spoke with Dr Liam Beiser-McGrath about what students will learn in IR227: Politics of Change: Governing Social Transformation.

What problem does your course aim to address?

Societies today face multiple, often overlapping transformations – from the climate crisis to the rise of artificial intelligence – but we lack good frameworks for understanding how such large-scale change is actually governed. Policymakers, analysts, and practitioners too often respond to these transitions re-actively, without the conceptual tools to work out why change happens when it does, what enables or blocks it, and how to steer it toward fair outcomes. IR227: Politics of Change: Governing Social Transformation addresses this gap by teaching students a set of analytical frameworks from political science and policy studies so they can move beyond ad hoc responses and develop strategic, evidence-informed approaches to governing societal transformation.

How does this course fit within the wider context of social policy?

Social policy has traditionally concerned itself with the design and evaluation of specific welfare programmes and institutions. This course broadens that lens by asking how entire systems of social provision come into being, evolve, and face disruption. It examines the political coalitions, institutional logics, and feedback mechanisms behind transitions like welfare state development, environmental regulation, and digital governance, placing social policy within the larger story of how societies manage fundamental structural change. It also speaks directly to frontier social policy debates around just transitions, AI's labour market effects, and the distributional consequences of decarbonisation – all areas where governance choices will shape social outcomes for decades to come.

How can students who take this course apply it in their future career?

The skills developed here transfer directly to careers in government, international organisations like the OECD and World Bank, think tanks, consulting firms, and NGOs. Students learn to assess institutional constraints, spot windows of opportunity for reform, and design politically feasible policy strategies – the kind of competencies valued wherever complex governance problems arise. Whether someone goes on to advise on climate policy, technology regulation, sustainability, or institutional reform, they will leave with a structured way of thinking about change that goes well beyond narrow technical knowledge.

Could you please describe the practical components of the course and how students will engage in hands-on learning in the classroom?

The course pairs lectures with interactive classes. The lectures introduce broad trends and the concepts used to understand them; the classes put them to work through case analysis and group discussion. Students examine comparative cases from a variety of areas using the theoretical frameworks from lectures to diagnose how and why these transitions unfolded as they did. Because the cases are genuinely complex and the Summer School cohort spans many countries, disciplines, and professional backgrounds, group discussions generate real deliberation and productive argument, which is where much of the deeper learning happens. Working side-by-side on hard governance questions means students tend to leave with a genuine network of peers, not just new analytical tools.

What resources would you recommend to anyone interested in taking this course?

Two recent books offer particularly good entry points. Thomas Hale's ‘Long Problems’ (2024) is a clear and engaging account of why climate change is so hard to govern, not just technically but politically, across generations and institutions. Anu Bradford's ‘Digital Empires’ (2023) does something similar for technology, comparing how the US, China, and the EU are each trying to govern the digital economy through very different regulatory models. Together they cover the two of the major contemporary transitions at the heart of the course, in an accessible manner. For a more practitioner-oriented perspective, the OECD's ‘Regions in Industrial Transition’ report shows how transition governance plays out on the ground. Together these give a good sense of the course's blend of academic depth and real-world application.

What is the most exciting thing students will learn in the classroom?

Often one of the most striking ideas for students is the "polycrisis" – the recognition that today's climate, technological, demographic, and geopolitical transitions are not separate challenges but deeply connected ones that can amplify each other in unexpected ways. Students come to see that a policy intervention designed for one transition can undermine progress on another, and that governing this complexity demands integrated strategies rather than siloed thinking. The course gives students the tools to recognise these interconnections and think creatively about coherent responses, a perspective that is both intellectually exciting and important for practically dealing with today's biggest challenges.