Implementing Public Policy: From Good Idea to Reality

Course Number: 84-336

Good public policy doesn’t just “happen.”  Rather, successful policy is the result of thorough research, careful drafting, and successful navigation within the government or non-government organization whose leadership may ultimately promulgate it. The course begins with a brief review of government and organizational behavior in a bureaucracy, and the identification of a federal agency’s policy system as a framework to which we will turn throughout the term. Study then shifts to an overview of several legal concepts and research skills applicable to federal policy and regulations. Though usually the province of law students and attorneys, such skills enable students to know when policy may be crafted “from scratch” — or where, when, and how policy must conform to larger governing legal or regulatory structure. Students then consider a particular public policy subcomponent, administrative law, which addresses the special circumstance of regulatory agencies and the statutory regimes that create and govern the federal policies created thereunder. The course culminates with Students developing and “staffing” a notional policy, modeled on the federal agency policy system model studied throughout the term.

Academic Year: 2024-2025
Semester(s): Spring
Units: 12
Location(s): Washington, DC