Mandatory core courses:

• Economics for Public Decisions

• Public Policy Challenges in a Global Context

• Evidence and Evaluation for Public Policy

• Policy Design and Implementation Lab

• Political Economics of Public Policy

• Comparative Politics of Europe

• Strategic Public Management and Leadership

• Law, Ethics, and Governance

Policy project (throughout year 1)

Skills track in communication, ethics and AI literacy (throughout year 1)

In the first year, you are required to complete eight core courses designed to provide a comprehensive toolkit for public policy. Throughout the first year, you also work in groups with a policy project in collaboration with a government agency or another organization. The project has deliverables throughout the year in the core courses. A parallel skills track further develops your abilities in written and oral communication, ethical reasoning, and AI literacy.   

This first year is structured around a thought life cycle of public policies:

1. Policy Foundations

Before you can solve a societal problem, you must understand its causes and what objective society is trying to achieve when adressing the problem. In the first phase, we focus on what the policy issue is and why it matters. You will learn about the big policy challanges of our time and what the ethical and economic rationale is for why a government should intervene.  

2. Policy Design & Evidence

Effective policies needs to be grounded in both theory and and data. In the second stage, we ask how we can find the policy solutions that actually work. You will obtain a solid theoretical understanding of policy design and learn the how to use data to evaluate public policy.  

3. Politics & Constraints

Policy does not exist in a vacuum. The theoretically optimal policy is often not feasible due to various political, orgainzational and institutional constraints. To be effective, you must understand the environment that shapes policies. In this phase, we study these constraints and how we can tackle them to implement appropriate policy.  

4. Management & Governance

The final step is ensuring that policy actually achieve the objective it was set out to solve. In this part, we explore how we can manage delivery, evaluate success and ensure accountability. You learn how to oversee public service delivery, navigate organizational complexity, and how we can create governance structures that deliver results and maintain legitimacy.