Policy-Making in a Global Age examines challenges to the global policy process and policy tools that leaders use to implement global policy. The course focuses on the role of the president, congress, political partisans, bureaucrats, the media, and interest groups in shaping policies. The policy-making process is changing as globalization, innovation, the changing balance of power, and other factors bring new technologies, groups, and tools into the policy mix. Because decision-making is so complex, we need to learn to understand motivations piece-by-piece and to consider how the various pressures add up differently in different decision-making environments – comparing the U.S. to other countries, comparing across different issue areas and policy tools, and comparing governmental decisions to those made by private companies and non-governmental organizations. Our in-class assessments of the global policy process will consciously consider the extent to which past evidence and judgments should be modified for the "global age." Overall, this course should help students understand the complexity of contemporary global policy-making
