Current course offerings

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Course description

This course frames public policy as a cognitive and ideational process where agents use ideas and mental schemas to understand the policy world. In doing so, it contrasts rational decision making with post-positivist approaches to decision making. The course begins with an introduction to the theory and conceptual tools for understanding knowledge and evidence in the public policy process. We ask what is useful or appropriate knowledge? And what does it mean to be muddling through? We move on to explore the problems of conventional policy analysis in a complex world. We then apply these conceptual and theoretical tools to better understand policy knowledges in practice through the consideration of case studies in the area of health and law order (in the Australian and regional context). The final module in the course is designed to take a practical look at the actual use of knowledge and evidence in public policy with the practitioner series. In this series of guest lectures we invite policy practitioners to discuss the applied use of knowledge and evidence in policy: advice; design; making; implementation; review; evaluation and audit.

Archived offerings