2023-24
Modern Challenges to Governance
I gave this course for the first time in the winter of 2017. It covers a range of challenges, such as climate change, globalization, inequality, the influence of money on politics, and so on. Here’s the introductory blurb from the course outline:
“What is real is what you have to deal with, what won’t go away just because it doesn’t fit with your prejudices.”
Charles Taylor (Sources of the self, 59).
“Nous courons sans souci dans le précipice, après que nous avons mis quelque chose devant nous pour nous empêcher de le voir.” [“We run carefree into the precipice, having put something in front of us to hide it from sight.”]
Blaise Pascal (Pensées, ¶183.)
“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Joni Mitchell (Big Yellow Taxi)
“‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The fellowship of the ring)
“Extend and pretend” describes a behaviour frequently used in financial markets. What happens, for example, when a borrower cannot repay a bank loan? If the bank classifies the loan as a bad one, it takes a loss on its books, and the officials who agreed to the loan look bad. What to do? One can extend: extend to the borrower a new loan to pay back the old one. And pretend: pretend that somehow or other the causes of the borrower’s failure will go away. And so the challenge of dealing with the problem is simply booted forward in time, for someone else to deal with, sometime or other.
The broader political analogies of this behaviour are clear. In the world of politics and policy many actors have an interest in simply extending current practices, and pretending that serious challenges aren’t real. And there are few incentives within the political and bureaucratic systems of modern democracies to encourage taking a long view, and building policy around that.
So one of the personal challenges you will face should you dwell in the world of politics and policy is that you will find there’s a “whole lot of pretendin’ going on.” You need to reflect upon how you will handle that. Much is at stake: the pretending can protect certain narrow personal goods: getting reelected, for the politician, staying out of trouble, for the civil servant. But it also threatens many things of great value. To counter this, you will need critical thinking, the ability to detect the many ways we refuse to engage with reality, and also appreciative thinking, the ability to identify those important goods that are worth defending.
Current Issues in Public Policy (PhD class)
Course outline introduction:
Think we must. Let us think in offices; in omnibuses; while we are standing in the crowd watching Coronations and Lord Mayor’s Shows; let us think as we pass the Cenotaph; and in Whitehall; in the gallery of the House of Commons; in the Law Courts; let us think at baptisms and marriages and funerals. Let us never cease from thinking – what is this ‘civilization’ in which we find ourselves?
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
There was no sign in [Eichmann] of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives, and the only notable characteristic one could detect in his past behavior as well as in his behavior during the trial and throughout the pre-trail examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness…
Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence.
Hannah Arendt, The life of the mind: Thinking
A Ph.D. program involves writing a thesis, lots of studying and essays, a certain amount of stress and, hopefully, some fun and the forging of new and lasting friendships. Along with all that, it should also be a time for thinking, for pondering Virginia Woolf’s durable question.
In this course, the tools for thinking I offer you are mostly drawn from traditions of political economy, a family of approaches that view economy, polity and culture as intertwined systems that shape, and are shaped by, “this ‘civilization’ in which we find ourselves.” The underlying claim that leads me to this angle is that we can’t understand any “current issues in public policy” –we can only misunderstand them– without including a political economy approach in our toolkit of analysis.
Qualitative Methods for Public Policy
Course outline introduction:
Methods teaching is often carved into distinct quantitative and qualitative courses. This division is regrettable, primarily because it can lead to an overly narrow quantitative pedagogy, focussing on technique and neglecting judgment.
This course aims to correct for that, examining the qualitative dimension of all research. Thus, we will be looking at traditional qualitative methods, such as interviews and observation. But we will also be considering the qualitative aspects of quantitative research. Even the most intimidating quantitative study involves vital qualitative judgments: What variable should be allowed to “stand in” for the phenomenon one really wants to measure, but cannot? How should survey questions be worded and sequenced?
More generally, this course will consider questions such as: what kinds of knowledge can be gained with different research strategies? What are the respective strengths and limitations of these strategies? What sorts of human judgments underlie any research work?
Updated: June 2024