2009-2010 First and Second Year Curriculum

The MPA Course Catalog

Goals of the MPA

The Master of Public Affairs at Sciences Po is grounded in analytical skills, applied to public affairs issues at local, national and global scales, with an emphasis on learning from a comparative perspective.  The MPA curriculum stresses the importance of institutions and organizations, as shaped by politics, economics and strategy:

• Institutions vary widely from place to place, and hence a global and comparative perspective on them enables us to see the strengths and weaknesses of different ways to solve policy problems, but also the multiple and different ways that problems can be solved in different contexts.
• Organizations, in the private, public, and para-public sectors, are the key sites where leadership and strategy are exercised to solve problems.
• Politics and economics define the constraints and contexts in which organizations and institutions evolve.  Students in the MPA at Sciences Po will thus get training that draws on the key disciplines of economics, politics, and sociology, in addition to other more specialized fields.  Quantitative analysis and qualitative methods are used to prepare, analyze and interpret information.

It is expected that a successful student in the Sciences Po MPA will be able to:

• Analyze public affairs problems successfully, especially in understanding why problems exist (why collective action generates problems), and what types of alternatives exist (and how to generate them by changing collective action);
• Use a critical perspective, thinking “out of the box,” in order to envisage alternatives.  But a critical perspective is always subject to the test of realistic strategic action, itself based on analysis of collective action possibilities.

Courses

Courses in the MPA course catalog have been grouped by their general theme as well as specific title.  This provides a picture of the quantity and type of core courses and electives offered in each broad field of public policy training.

The general norm for each course is 24 hours per semester.  In the first year, students take five to seven courses per semester, to which are added study trips, the special lecture series, language classes, and individual research.  In the second year, students take two required courses, electives, concentration courses, and a tutorial linked to their capstone project, as well as language classes and the GPP special lecture series.

Please note that the courses listed below are part of the general course offerings in the MPA course catalog. They are not necessarily taught every year, nor are they necessarily taught by the same faculty member each time.  Each year’s specific course offerings are indicated at the tables at the end of this document and on the website in September.

The courses below are not in sequences in the formal sense, but listed rather in thematic groups. In some cases therefore, students may take the courses in each group “out of sequence.”

Key:
R core course
E elective course, open to first and second year students
RC second-year concentration course
RCAP second-year capstone tutorial

Organizations and Leadership

Organizations in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, are the places where purposeful problem-solving activity is organized.  Innovation in solving problems depends on leadership and strategy, but in today’s world, these qualities are themselves being redefined.  The “future” is no longer “planned” or “administered,” but rather understood and subtly shaped.

R Situating Ourselves in Complex Settings (Erhard Friedberg and Henri Bergeron)
R Reform versus Strategy: Making Choices at the End of the Administrative Era (Riel Miller)
E Scenario Planning Analysis (Vianney Basse and Thierry Senechal)
E Management of Organizational and Institutional Conflict (Raymond Saner)
E Transnational Collective Action (Virginie Guiraudon)
E Organizational Leadership and Ethics (Erhard Friedberg and Eric Jean Garcia)

Quantitative Analysis

Statistics are representations of the world.  They help understand policy problems, but also shape  perceptions of these problems.  Effective leaders must understand how to interpret numbers, and also how to direct their collection and analysis.

R Statistics and Data Analysis for Policymakers – Level 1A (Bruno Cautrès)
R Statistics and Data Analysis for Policymakers – Level 1B (Bruno Cautrès)
R Statistics and Data Analysis for Policymakers – Level 2 (Bruno Cautrès)

Public Policy and Politics

Politics and institutions shape one another.  Institutions create long-term channels for action on policy problems, but they are also used and reshaped by politics.  Understanding how to interact with the political process is essential for policy actors, as is understanding the inherent “fields of force” defined by existing institutions. 

R State Restructuring and Policy Change: Government and Governance (Patrick Le Galès)
R Governing by Delegation (Mark Thatcher and Hitomi Kubo)
R  Comparative Public management (R. Kent Weaver)
E From Analysis to Policy (Chris Brooks)
E The Comparative Politics of Policy Reform. State-society relations and political institutions in contemporary democracies (Emiliano Grossman)

                                                                                             Economics

Policies are underlain by economics.  The creation and distribution of wealth are shaped by public policies, but equally, changes in the wealth creation process offer up new problems to be solved by public policies, in many and sundry areas, such as education, R&D, technology, education, distribution, urban policy, consumer policy, mobility, and security.  Economics is important to policymaking in terms of both broad trends and in the microeconomics of incentives to public and private choices.

R Microeconomics for Public Policy – Level 1A (Anton Granik)
R Microeconomics for Public Policy – Level 1B (Anton Granik)             
R Microeconomics for Public Policy – Level 2 (Anton Granik)                                      
R International Macroeconomics and Policy Making (Francesco Saraceno)
R Globalization: Theory and Evidence (Michael Storper)
R Public Finance and Financial Management (Thierry Senechal)

Law

Institutions are shaped by laws, and institutional change often requires change in the legal system that provides the interface between broad principles of public action and individuals and organizations.  In today’s world, moreover, lawmaking and rulemaking increasingly spill-over international boundaries.

E Global Governance: Regulation, Adjudication and Dispute Settlement Beyond the State (Sabino Cassese)
E Law and Globalization: How Globalization Transforms Domestic and International Legal Relations (Jean Bernard Auby and Wilfried Bolewski)

Policymaking in Transitional Situations

At times, many of the parameters of policymaking undergo sudden, rapid change.  These are generally moments when institutions are invented or their underlying design is changed.  These moments arise sometimes from political or economic crisis, sometimes from rapid and successful development. 
 
E Policy-making in Transition: Tools and Strategies (Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead)
E EU/Asia in a comparative perspective. Regional development policies and regionalization processes  in the new E U Member States and in ASEAN (François Bafoil)
E East Asian Political Economy in Transition: Globalization, the Role of State, and Development Trajectories in China, Japan, and Korea (Yves Tiberghien)

Critical Policy Challenges

 A number of areas have emerged as challenges to traditional policymaking, places where the policy field is “young” but the problems especially important, and in some cases presenting significant cross-border effects.  In other more traditional areas, societal and economic change have made older solutions less and less successful.  Among these areas, we can include the environment; various risks (technological, personal, economic); the increasingly multi-level nature of economic activity and its governance; social welfare; regional development; and international security.

E Environmental Policy  (Stephanie Pincetl)
E International Security and Public Policy (Ghassan Salamé)
E Managing Innovation in the Globalizing Learning Economy (Bengt-Ake Lundvall)
E International Health (Henri Bergeron and Patrick Castel)
RC Risk Governance (Olivier Borraz and Pierre Benoît Joly)
RC Multilevel Economic Governance (Jacques Le Cacheux)
RC Economic and Territorial Development (Chris Brooks)
RC Human Security  (Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh and Hitomi Kubo)
RC Global Governance for Sustainable Development (Laurence Tubiana)

Policy actors must be able not only to analyze problems and engage in strategy and leadership, but, to be effective at these, they must be able to communicate with many different audiences. A variety of professional development activities are required in the program:

Workshops:
The MPA workshops are two or three-day intensive seminars on a given topic. The group of students is reduced so that a dynamic interaction between participants and with the instructor results in a constructive learning process.
Four workshops are offered each semester during one week and students are required to register at least for one in the first semester. In the second semester first year students are also required to register at least for one workshop.  For second-year students in the second semester, workshops are optional.

• Behavioral Game Theory: An Active Classroom Approach with Applications to public affairs (Bernard Ruffieux)
• Change in Organizations (Erhard Friedberg and Yves Morieux)
• The International Financial Crisis: Benign Neglect Has Failed, Where do we go from here? (Philip Ward)
• Frontier Issues in Global Governance and the Role of Key Actors (US, EU, China, Japan) (Yves Tiberghien)
• International Relations and Intercultural Behavior (Michel Sauquet and Philippe Pierre)
• Policy Advocacy in the Media I: Message and Media Basics for Policy Advocacy and Policy Advocacy Media Releases  (Tom Lansner)
• Policy Advocacy in the Media II: Public Presentations for Policy Advocacy and Policy Advocacy Media Interview Training (Tom Lansner)
• The construction of the French Republican Model (Céline Maray and Hélène Marineau)

First Year Summer Project:

The MPA at Sciences Po is a professional master of twenty-one months. This period includes four semesters of classes and a three summer months. During these three months, the students are required to do a Summer Project.  The student is responsible for finding the Summer Project with the assistance of the MPA Administration. The Summer Project is the moment when students apply what they have learned during their first year at the MPA and is completed by writing a paper. Students receive three credits and a pass/fail grade for the accomplishment of the report on the Summer Project. The grade will be assigned by the MPA Director based on the evaluation by the supervisor.

The Summer Project can take two forms:

1) A Summer Project is research work carried out by a student for a Professor and results in a written work.  In setting up a Summer Project, students should:

• Obtain from the Professor a detailed description of the project and the student’s duties within it and have approval of this from the MPA by June 15th.
• Write up a report of the Summer Project by September 15th that the supervisor will use to grade the student (between 50 and 100 pages maximum).
• Receive an evaluation from the Professor to be sent to the MPA Director.

2) An Internship is real work experience in an organization that emphasizes the job training of the intern. Traditionally, an internship is the opportunity for students to network, make contacts and “get a foot in the door” of an organization. When searching for an internship/traineeship, students should bear in mind that they will have to:

• Obtain from the employer/client a detailed description of his/her duties during the internship and validate it at the MPA by June 15th.
• Process the “convention de stage” with Sciences Po and the employer by June 30th.
• Write up a report of the internship by September 15th that the MPA Director will use to grade the student (50 pages maximum).

Receive an evaluation from the employer to be sent to the MPA Director.

GPP Round Table:
Two round tables will be organized each year, one in the middle of each semester, on a relevant public policy topic. The first one will be organized by the MPA administration and the second one by the students. These roundtables are opportunities for students to exercise their organizational skills and interact with the wider Sciences Po community.

Career Services:
A series of activities and events will be provided to the students and organized with their collaboration. Among others: elective course on professional skills, career breakfasts, master classes, career counseling, internship offers, and job databases.

Three semester-long courses in the area of concentration are required for all students who choose the concentration: in the first semester, there is an overview course and a methods course. In the second semester, there is a second overview course.
In addition, second year students who are not part of the concentration itself may take one of the “overview” courses as elective each semester.

Risk Governance : Policymaking, Knowledge and Uncertainty (Olivier Borraz and Pierre-Benoit Joly)

RC Overview course
RC Concentration methods course

Multilevel Economic Governance  (Jacques Le Cacheux)

RC Overview course
RC Concentration methods course

Economic and Territorial Development  (Chris Brooks)

RC Overview course
RC Concentration methods course

Human Security (Shahrbanou Tadjbaksh and Hitomi Kubo)

RC Overview course
RC Concentration methods course

Global Governance for Sustainable Development (Laurence Tubiana)
RC Overview course
RC Concentration methods course

 

A capstone is defined as “a client-oriented, group research project, based on original field research, which generates a deliverable product for the client, and where this product is also graded according to norms of academic quality.”  The methods used in the capstone draw on the methods from the MPA as a whole (analytical, academic methods), but goes beyond them to engage the students in a hands-on professional experience, involving experiential learning in a professional setting.  The group experience is critical to this learning process, as is the understanding of the client’s needs, engagement with the client in achieving the appropriate definition of the problem to be addressed and hence the scope of the work, and the nature of the final product to be delivered.

The relationship between capstones and concentrations is flexible:  some capstones are offered by concentration leaders and have a close link to concentrations. Some concentrations do not offer linked capstones.  Some capstones are offered by  capstone leaders who do not teach concentrations. 

Even in the case of a capstone that is offered by a concentration leader, students who are from outside the concentration may elect to take that capstone, after conferring with the capstone leader and getting approval to participate.

The capstone leader identifies the client, the deliverable, and works with students to define the nature of the group preparation, field work, and writing to be done.

Students in each capstone are required to participate in the two-semester group capstone tutorial course (RCAP).

Dates to be borne in mind are:

1.  Registration week: students choose capstones
2.  October 1st:  tutorials begin
3.  December 10:  capstone group “work plan” submitted to MPA Director
4.  January 31: all field research completed
5.  May 31: final draft of capstone project submitted to MPA Director
6.  Last week of May:  two-day internal capstone conference (Capstone Forum), required for all second year students.  Each group makes a formal, required presentation to conference

List of capstones to be offered (subject to change):

• Capstone TBC (Hitomi Kubo)
• Eastern Europe and Greater Mekong Subregion. A comparative Perspective (François Bafoil)
• The Development of Professional Micro Credit in Developed Countries: Best Models and Best practices (Chris Brooks)
• An Evaluation of the Best Practices Institute at the Shanghai World Exhibition for the Bureau International des Expositions (Chris Brooks)
• Improving the Impact of Information and Computer Technology on the Lives of Citizens and Enterprises in Spain( Chris Brooks)
• Living on the Edge: An Analysis of Park and City Planning for the Table Mountain National Park (Glenn Hyman)
• Ask What You Can Do To Build a Better Future: Conversations With CEOs (Thierry Sénéchal)
• Capstone TBC (Jacques Lechacheux – Eloi Laurent)
• Benchmarking Transatlantic Relations (Virginie Guiraudon)
• Corporate Social Responsibility (Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead)
• Nutrition Labeling in the EU (Henri Bergeron and Patrick Castel)
• Trade and Development for LDCs in the context of  Multi-Actor- Multi-Policy Governance  (Raymond Saner and Charles Tsai)

Although oriented toward professional practice, the MPA allows a limited number of students to gain in-depth academic research experience necessary for admission to a doctoral program.  These students may choose the “thesis option.”

Completing a thesis prepares the student to ask for admission to a doctoral program, but does not insure such admission.  It should be understood that admission to doctoral studies, whether at Sciences Po or somewhere else, is a separate process and we do not guarantee admission to doctoral studies via this option.

The thesis option is in lieu of completing a capstone as the work product for the second year admission to the thesis option is by petition.
 
The requirements of  a thesis are as follows:

• It must be based on original research (i.e., not just on secondary sources or literature review). This means original work of a qualitative and/or quantitative nature;
• It consists of a document of around 100 pages, plus footnotes, tables and references;
• It takes on a distinctive public affairs problem, and uses theory and evidence to address the question, and attempts to situate itself on the cutting edge of debates and evidence about that problem.

Preparing a thesis proposal: 
In order to be considered for the thesis option, students are required to prepare a proposal for the  thesis. A proposal  consists of the following eight sections, in this order: (a)  what is the problem to be addressed and why is it significant? (b) what are the principal existing approaches to the problem  in the existing academic literature? (c) what does the thesis hope to add to the existing state of the art? (d) what data and evidence will be used in the thesis?  What methods will be used to analyze this information?  (e) what are the potential problems in gaining access to data and evidence?  What additional skills will the student require in order to carry out the analysis and how does s/he hope to acquire them? (f) a preliminary list of the chapters of the thesis (g) a time line for completion of the research and writing (h) a bibliography of major existing contributions.  The proposal should be a maximum of 12 pages.   Any proposal that does not consist of these sections will not be considered.

Students may also want to think about the type of doctoral program to which they ultimately intend to apply.  There are doctoral programs in public policy and public affairs at certain universities, but public affairs students may also want to enter one of the social scientific disciplines. In choosing a subject for a thesis, it would be advisable to think about how well it prepares the student for a particular type of doctoral program and whether this is consistent with the student’s ambitions.

The process for petitioning for admission to the thesis option is as follows:  (a) the student must submit a fully completed petition, following the model described above, along with the name of the faculty member who has agreed to serve as advisor for the thesis, to the Program Director, by October 20.  A jury of the Program Director, Academic Director, and other members, will then consider proposals and provide admission decisions by October 30.  Those students who are not admitted to the thesis option will have to complete a capstone project. Moreover, any student accepted into the option will not have the subsequent opportunity to abandon it in favor of enrolling in a capstone.  Thus, it is essential that anyone considering the thesis option understand the consequences of making this choice.

A maximum of five students will be admitted into this option each year. 
It is strongly suggested that students identify their potential thesis topic and advisor prior to the end of the first year, and that – based on preliminary discussions with their advisor – they work on the proposal over the summer.  A draft proposal should be presented to the advisor at the beginning of the second year (late September).  Revisions should be made by October 10, and the advisor should once again review the proposal, so that a final, polished version can be submitted by the October 20 deadline.  Incomplete proposals will not  be accepted in any case.

The thesis will be completed under the supervision of the advisor.  Theses will be approved, in draft form, by the advisor, and then submitted to a jury, consisting of the Program Director, Academic Director and additional members, for approval.  The thesis must be submitted – in a final, polished version -- by May 15 of the second year, to the program staff, in order to be considered in time for receiving graduation credit.