Spring 2021 - 60655 - PA 388K - Advanced Topics in Public Policy

This course will introduce students to major aspects of global environmental governance. We will begin with introduction of essential concepts related to collective action and public goods. In the first part of the course, we will address the nature of global environmental problems, collective action theory, the leading international organizations dealing with environmental problems, the significant pieces of global rules governing the environment, the role of the United States, science, non-state actors, and private governance. In the second half of the course, we will look in detail at a few issues, including air quality and ozone depletion, climate change, oceans management and fishing, rainforest conservation, species protection, and the future of global environmental governance. The goals are to (1) familiarize you with the key debates and issues past, present, and future in global environmental governance, (2) provide you with a set of analytical tools to understand the scope for progress in this arena, (3) develop your sense of the landscape of organizations and information in this space, and (4) spur your creative engagement with global environmental issues in your subsequent professional career. Grading and Assignments Grading will be based on a grounding assignment (10%), two response papers (20%), a midterm exam (30%), a final paper (30%), and a final policy memo (10%). For your paper, the idea is for you to take a transborder environmental problem that continues to persist and write a paper that describes the nature of the problem and evaluating the response to date and prescribes how the problem could be addressed in the future. The paper will be 12-15 pages and be due roughly a week after the last day of class. You will accompany the final paper with a 2 page single-spaced policy memo. For the grounding exercise, I will select a news article or two related to the class session, and you will be asked to lead a class discussion relating the news stories to the class readings. You should write a one-page double-spaced paper that links the news stories to the main themes from the week’s readings and identifies a couple of questions that you’d like the class to discuss. For the writing summaries, you will write a two-page double-spaced summary of the readings for two different days (that should be different from the grounding day) and these should be from BEFORE THE MIDTERM. For that assignment, your responses should be double-spaced. You should address all of the authors you read for that week. What is their argument? Do you agree with their assessment? Why or why not? This assignment will force you to be pithy. The best papers will provide a synthesis of some of the key points made in the readings, your own 2 critical evaluation of and reactions to the readings, and comments on the conceptual implications of the readings. Do NOT sequentially summarize each of the readings. Response papers are due the beginning of the class for the topic on that given day. All of your work should be original. Please no plagiarism; don’t pass off some author’s work as your own. If you do and I find out, bad news! I will enforce the strongest punishments in the LBJ School's plagiarism policy that I can. Please refer to the official policy for further details. * Late assignments will be penalized by 1/3 of a letter grade for every day late. Thus, an A- would become a B+, a B+ a B, etc. My grading scale 93 and up is an A 90-93 A87-90 B+ 83-87 B 80-83 BReadings: All readings will be available on Canvas, unless otherwise noted on the syllabus as a URL or through UT LIBRARY. I also encourage you to read current events related to the coursework.  I have a Twitter feed that you might find interesting for posts on the environment. https://twitter.com/busbyj2