Preliminary core courses:

• Public Policy Challenges in a Global Context 
• Economics for Public Policy  
• Evidence and Evaluation for Public Policy 
• Public Finance and Government Budgeting
• Comparative Politics of Europe
• Policy Design and Implementation Lab 
• Strategic Public Management and Leadership 
• Law and Governance 
•  
• Policy project
  (throughout year 1)
  
  
• Skills track in oral communication, AI-assisted writing and negotiations
  (throughout year 1)

In the first year of the Master program in Public Policy, you are required to complete a set of core courses designed to provide a comprehensive toolkit for public policy. Throughout the first year, you also work in groups on a policy project in collaboration with a government agency or other organization. The project has deliverables throughout the year integrated into the core courses. A parallel skills track further develops your abilities in oral communication, AI-assisted writing and negotiation.  

The first year is designed to help you navigate the full policy process:

1. Policy Foundation

Before you can solve a societal problem, you must understand its causes and what objective society is trying to achieve when addressing 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 challenges of our time and what the ethical and economic rationale is for why a government should intervene.

2. Policy Formulation

Effective policies need to be grounded in both theory and data. In the second stage, we ask how we can find the policy solutions that actually work.  

3. Policy Implementation

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

4. Policy Evaluation

The final step is ensuring that a policy actually achieves the objective it was set out to solve. In this part, we explore how we evaluate success and ensure accountability. You will learn how to oversee public service delivery and how to use data to evaluate policies.