This course offers a comparative look at the making and implementation of policy in the global arena. It explores key concepts and theories concerning national interest, ethics, negotiation, decision making, strategic design, and crisis management, and it applies those concepts via case studies and simulations in diplomacy, trade policy, development assistance, peacekeeping operations, security policy, and transnational advocacy movements. The course aims to help students learn not only to analyze but also to implement policy: it employs an action-oriented approach that obliges students to react as a policy-maker would and thus gain a better appreciation of how and why states, organizations, and leaders act as they do.
In seeking to bridge the gap between theory and practice, the course is divided into two parts, “Concepts” and “Applications.” The first focuses on the acquisition of key theoretical and conceptual approaches on which we will draw in part two as we apply these concepts. We will employ case studies throughout, but in the first half of the course they will be used to explicate the concepts, while in the second half we will use cases to apply concepts already learned. Cases will span every region and every major power (along with several lesser ones and a number of non-state actors), and cover a wide range of issue areas.