PSC 663-2 Fall 2022 Policy and Planning in the Middle East (original) (raw)

This seminar offers students in the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program insights into the challenges of policy making through the examination of case studies relating to the policy making in the Middle East and US policy towards the region. Rather than drawing from scholarship and experience in public administration about policy planning and implementation, this seminar focuses on understanding the political contexts of policies that shape both policymaking and the results of policies. In short, the seminar asks why policies often fail to meet their planned goal. Through a diverse range of case studies across the region and through time (since the early Cold War), students explore how political conflicts, competing interests, limits of knowledge, faulty theories, ideological blindness, risk taking, fear, contingencies, the unexpected agency of actors, and other factors have shaped critical moments of political change and geopolitical conflict in the Middle East.