Public Policy

Optional Courses

We offer a wide range of options, in specialist areas of public policy and in aspects of policy making or analysis such as evaluation. The precise list may vary from year to year reflecting staff availability. The following gives an indication of the current choices

Economic Development & Employment

The course aims to explore the different ways of increasing economic development at the regional and local levels, including their rationale and practical application. It examines some of the tensions and trade-offs involved, including how best to enhance city and regional competitiveness; increase productivity and the employment rate, and strike the right balance between inward investment and endogenous growth.

Regenerating Cities: Strategies & Evaluation

This course provides an overview of the development, delivery and impact of regeneration strategies. It explores the challenges of achieving effective regeneration in UK cities in the context of global change and competition, while also considering experiences in North American and Europe. It focuses on strategies at the city, regional and area levels, rather than on those for neighbourhoods. The course also provides an introduction to the issues involved in assessing the effectiveness of regeneration.

Public Policy & Fiscal Austerity

Public Policy and Fiscal Austerity aims to provide a wide-ranging introduction to issues in contemporary public finance and sets public finance in its long term and international context. The course will identify and assess the drivers of financial policy change, it will evaluate the impact of redistributional policy in the round, provide an overview key cross-cutting themes in public finance policy, and, apply these ideas to a series of welfare state case studies. The disitnctive feature of the course is that it assesses the significance of the credit crunch and fiscal austerity for welfare policy in the UK and locates contemporary public policies in a coherent financial framework.

Crime, Community & Safety (Part A)

This course aims to promote understanding of the manifestation, causes and consequences of youth crime and disorder (antisocial behaviour) in residential communities.

Crime, Community & Safety (Part B)

The course aims to stimulate awareness of community safety strategies designed to confront and ameliorate youth crime and disorder (antisocial behaviour) in residential communities.

Evaluation of Public Policy

The aim of this course is to introduce participants to different approaches to the evaluation of public policies and programmes, the strengths and weaknesses of each and to provide an understanding of why different approaches may be more or less suitable in different circumstances. The course will not make participants into expert evaluation practitioners, but it should help them to be more informed users and commissioners of evaluations.

Community Planning is a central plank of contemporary governance arrangements in Scotland in which the aim is to promote more joined up, strategic working between public agencies working at local government and more local spatial scales. A broadly equivalent approach is in place in England - Local Strategic Partnerships. Both are part of attempts to 'reform' and 'modernise' local government and the public sector more generally, and in particular, to sharpen the focus on delivering tangible 'outcomes' from public services. The course explores the experience of community planning within the wider context of the long history of partnership working and joined up government. It aims to help participants develop a critical understanding of the potential of community planning - and of partnership and joined up government - to deliver real change in the design and delivery of public policy.

Re-making Urban Neighbourhoods

Urban neighbourhoods are constantly being made and re-made in an ongoing process of urban development and change. The focus of this course is on the neighbourhoods which seem to fare worst out of this process: neighbourhoods of concentrated disadvantage. The aim of this course is to provide an overview of current debates and policies concerned with the re-making of such neighbourhoods. It offers a contemporary take on an age old phenomenon, pointing to the range of ways in which poor neighbourhoods can be re-made: physically, socially and economically.

Researching & Evidencing the Policy Process

The course provides an introduction to research and its relationship to policy. The course will examine the current shift towards evidence-based policy and will look at the important factors that need to be considered when assessing research quality and relevance. Qualitative and quantitative methods will be covered considering their strengths and weaknesses and appropriate usage rather than how to use these techniques. The course will also cover the process of commissioning research including writing research specifications. Consideration will also be given to how research is then used to inform and influence policy. In an attempt to close the policy circle the course will also consider how policy is evaluated. The course is aimed at: those who in the course of their job might be expected to understand and use research findings; those responsible for commissioning research, and those who might be carrying out research which is intended to influence policy.

Strategic Management & Decision Making

The aim of this course is to enable students to enhance their capabilities in management, leadership, decision-making, negotiation and associated generic competencies by relating established theory and knowledge in these fields to real estate, planning, public policy and urban policy.