Public Administration and Reform

States can make people’s lives better. In this course you will learn under what circumstances this happens and what reforms the country needs.

The state is capable of changing people’s lives for the better, but can also make it worse. What does it depend on? Why do some states do better than others? And why do public policies vary so much from country to country? In this course we will analyze the state itself as an institution or set of institutions: factors of its “quality” and capacity.

We will consider the influence of social coalitions and political rules of the game on the course and outcome of reforms. We will also explore the role of ideas that guide reformers and the international context for the process of public administration. Using concrete examples, we will analyze when a reform is possible and when, on the contrary, a political system has been unable to cope with an obviously urgent challenge for decades.

Our approach will be strictly comparative, talking about the differences between European countries and the United States, developed and developing states, democracies and authoritarian regimes. In the second part of the course we will look at specific areas: education (school and university), health care, trade and industrial policy, labor relations, ecology, and gender aspects of public administration. We will devote the lion’s share of our time to the analysis of concrete cases and best practices.