Governance 390: Public Policy and Administrative Governance will allow students to become familiar with the actors, institutions, and processes of public policy-making and administrative governance in Canada. It will also help students to develop the analytical tools necessary to think critically about matters associated with the making and implementation of Canadian public policy. When you have completed the course you should be able to achieve the following objectives:

  1. Discuss the character of public bureaucracy and provide a theoretically informed analysis of the contrast between a classic Weberian bureaucracy and the type of public bureaucracy advocated by the New Public Management (NPM)
  2. Outline and discuss the role of bureaucratic, political, and non-state actors in the policy process
  3. Contrast the various policy instruments and service delivery mechanisms used in policy implementation and comment on the factors shaping the possibility of successful policy implementation
  4. Understand and discuss the nature of democratic accountability in parliamentary government and comment on approaches to ensuring ethics in administrative governance
  5. Comment on the significance of social diversity to the making and implementation of public policy and discuss the relationship between social diversity and the “differential impact” of public policy
  6. Contrast the governing paradigms associated with the administrative welfare state and those of the neo liberal state and explain the relationship of the NPM to the neo liberal mode of governance