Policy Design
A.Y. 2026/2027
Learning objectives
This course supports the CSPS mission to equip students with the analytical and practical competences needed to deliver empirically grounded, theoretically informed explanations of political and social phenomena relevant to public policy.
Expected learning outcomes
It offers a comprehensive introduction to policy design, integrating core theoretical foundations with practical applications. Students will develop the capacity to model, assess, and improve policy designs using contemporary approaches, including behavioral and institutional perspectives
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Knowledge and Understanding:
Understand key theories of policy design—including institutional analysis, behavioral economics, and mechanistic approaches; analyze different types of policy problems and their structural characteristics; comprehend the link between policy tools and behavioral assumptions; apply concepts of causation to evaluate policy designs.
- Applying Knowledge and Understanding:
Design policy interventions using logic models and theories of change; use Coleman's boat framework to decompose complex policy problems; select appropriate policy tools based on behavioral assumptions; develop valid indicators for representing policy designs.
- Making Judgements:
Evaluate the effectiveness and appropriateness of different tools; critically assess the ethical implications of various policy instruments, especially nudges; judge the strength of evidence for causal claims; balance trade-offs between policy effectiveness and democratic values.
- Communication Skills:
Present policy designs using professional frameworks and visual tools; facilitate group discussions on controversial policy choices; communicate behavioral insights to non-specialist audiences.
- Learning Skills:
Conduct independent research on emerging approaches to policy design; synthesize insights from multiple disciplines; develop skills for lifelong learning in rapidly evolving policy environments.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Knowledge and Understanding:
Understand key theories of policy design—including institutional analysis, behavioral economics, and mechanistic approaches; analyze different types of policy problems and their structural characteristics; comprehend the link between policy tools and behavioral assumptions; apply concepts of causation to evaluate policy designs.
- Applying Knowledge and Understanding:
Design policy interventions using logic models and theories of change; use Coleman's boat framework to decompose complex policy problems; select appropriate policy tools based on behavioral assumptions; develop valid indicators for representing policy designs.
- Making Judgements:
Evaluate the effectiveness and appropriateness of different tools; critically assess the ethical implications of various policy instruments, especially nudges; judge the strength of evidence for causal claims; balance trade-offs between policy effectiveness and democratic values.
- Communication Skills:
Present policy designs using professional frameworks and visual tools; facilitate group discussions on controversial policy choices; communicate behavioral insights to non-specialist audiences.
- Learning Skills:
Conduct independent research on emerging approaches to policy design; synthesize insights from multiple disciplines; develop skills for lifelong learning in rapidly evolving policy environments.
Lesson period: Third trimester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course can be attended as a single course.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Responsible
Lesson period
Third trimester
Course syllabus
A public policy is, at bottom, a set of causal theories — a bet that if we intervene on something we can control, given some assumptions about how people behave and institutions work, we can improve something. This course treats policy as an object that is designed, and design as a discipline that can be taught, applied, and assessed.
Over forty hours you move through the full arc of the designer's craft. You learn to diagnose a policy problem by reconstructing the social mechanisms that produce it; to design an intervention by matching instruments to the behavior of target populations; and to formalize that intervention as rules whose constraints can be read, coded, and even simulated.
**Module I — Diagnose**
Reconstruct why a policy problem persists: institutions, behavior, and the social mechanisms of Coleman's micro-macro boat. Ends with a theory of change.
*S01 - The design stance*
If a policy is a bet about cause and effect, what exactly are we betting on?
Public policy reframed as a set of causal theories rather than a bundle of intentions or documents. We separate the instrument, its objectives, and the assumptions that link them, and adopt the designer's stance: getting something we want by intervening on something we can control. The course map, the portfolio you will build, and the standards by which a design is judged.
Read Easton (1957), An approach to the analysis of political systems.
*S02 - Structuring policy problems*
Does a policy problem exist in the world, or in the way we frame it?
How framing and boundary work turn a diffuse social condition into a governable problem — and how each framing quietly pre-commits a family of solutions. Wicked problems and their resistance to any definitive formulation. Choosing a target population and a point of attack, and why that choice is already half the design.
Read Schmidt (2010), Taking ideas and discourse seriously.
*S03 - Institutions & behavior*
Why do people follow rules?
The two great answers: the calculus account, where rules stabilize expectations and reshape payoffs, and the culture account, where rules furnish taken-for-granted scripts and identities. The four neoinstitutionalisms as complementary lenses on the same behavior. How each lens locates the causes a designer can actually act on.
Read Falleti & Lynch (2009), Context and causal mechanisms.
*S04 - Social mechanisms I — the micro-macro link*
How can a macro-level problem be explained without a macro-level cause?
Coleman's boat as the engine of a diagnosis: descend from a macro condition to the situation actors face, cross to how they form action, and ascend to the macro outcome their choices produce. The three mechanisms — situational, action-formation, transformational — laid out in turn. Why a macro correlation demands micro-foundations to be more than description.
Read Hedström & Ylikoski (2010); Coleman (1990), ch. 1.
*S05 - Social mechanisms II — compliance & transformation*
When individual compliance adds up, does it always add up the way we expect?
Action formation under formal institutions through belief-desire-opportunity(-capacity) schemes. The transformational step reconsidered as the aggregation of (non-)compliance rather than institution-free emergence. Compliance cascades, tipping and threshold effects that produce surprising aggregate outcomes.
Read Olejniczak & Sliwowski (2015), Behaviourally informed interventions.
*S06 - Theories of change & logic models*
What has to be true for this intervention to work — and how would we know if it isn't?
Program theory as the explicit chain from inputs and activities to outputs, outcomes and impact. Surfacing the assumptions and risks on which each link depends, and reading them as testable claims. The crucial distinction between an implementation failure and a theory failure.
Read Funnell & Rogers (2011), Purposeful Program Theory, ch. 1-2.
*S07 - Studio I — a policy diagnosis*
Can you defend every arrow in your own boat?
A working session on Deliverable 1: each group presents a Coleman's-boat diagnosis of a self-chosen problem for structured peer critique. Clinics on identifying a homogeneous target population, justifying each mechanism from the literature, and drawing a diagram that genuinely improves readability. Common failure modes — implicit populations, hand-waved links, cyclical boats — diagnosed live.
Read — studio; bring a candidate problem.
**Module II — Design**
Move from problem to intervention. The full toolbox — sticks, carrots and sermons, plus organization and procedure — matched to how target populations behave.
*S08 - The instruments of public action*
Given a problem, how many genuinely different ways does government have to act on it?
The move from problem to intervention. Carrots, sticks and sermons as the organizing typology of substantive tools; McDonnell & Elmore's reading of tools as situational triggers; and Schneider & Ingram's insight that every instrument rests on a behavioral assumption about the target's capacity and willingness. Choosing a tool by matching, not by default or habit.
Read Bemelmans-Videc et al. (2010), Carrots, Sticks & Sermons, ch. 1; Salamon (2001).
*S09 - Sticks — mandates & regulation*
When is coercion the right instrument rather than the lazy one?
Prohibiting and prescribing under authority — standards, rules and mandates that assume capacity but not willingness. The costs they carry: monitoring and enforcement, uniformity imposed across heterogeneous cases, and adversarial state-citizen relations. The conditions under which a stick is both effective and legitimate, and the temptation to over-use it.
Read Schneider & Ingram (1990), Behavioral assumptions of policy tools.
*S10 - Carrots — taxation & expenditure*
If we can't forbid a behavior, can we simply make it cost more?
Rewarding and penalizing to reshape the payoffs of alternative actions. Negative externalities, and the routes to internalizing a cost. Incentive design and its characteristic pathology — goal displacement, where actors optimize the metric rather than the aim.
Read Bemelmans-Videc et al. (2010), Carrots, Sticks & Sermons, part II.
*S11 - Sermons — information & nudges*
Can telling people stories, or rearranging their choices, count as governing?
Persuasion, mandatory disclosure and choice architecture as instruments in their own right. Behaviorally-informed interventions, and the ethical line between helping a choice and manipulating it. John's provocation that, in an information age, every tool is becoming informational — and what that does to the older typologies of public action.
Read John (2013), All tools are informational now.
*S12 - Organization & system-changing tools*
What do we reach for when carrots, sticks and sermons all fail?
Direct provision and public organization; capacity-building that widens what actors are able to do; and meta-tools that reshuffle the game itself — reallocating authority, creating agencies, changing who decides. The uncertain payoffs of building capacity.
Read Howlett (2000), Managing the hollow state.
*S13 - Procedural tools & participation*
Who gets to be in the room, and does it change what comes out?
Tools that shape how a policy is made rather than what it directly does. The democracy cube — who participates, how they communicate and decide, and with what consequence for public action. Co-design, deliberation and the democratic-deficit critique. Why procedure can decide the legitimacy and effectiveness of every substantive tool deployed through it.
Read Fung (2006), Varieties of participation.
*S14 - Studio II — tool mixes & packaging*
Does your instrument actually trigger the mechanism you diagnosed?
A working session on Deliverable 2. Matching each tool to the specific mechanism it is meant to fire; calibrating its intensity; and sequencing and bundling instruments into a coherent package free of internal contradiction. Peer critique focused squarely on the fit between the behavioural assumptions invoked and the change the design expects.
**Module III — Formalise - Institutional grammar & the anatomy of constraints**
Render the instrument precise. Read policy instruments as rules, parse them with institutional grammar, and analyze how their constraints configure the action situation — text made coded, comparable and computationally tractable.
*S15 - Policy tools as rules*
What is the difference between a rule you must obey and a suggestion you may ignore?
The substantive tools designed in Module II, seen up close, are rules — and every rule has an anatomy: if X, then you must or may (not) do Y, or else Z, unless X′, and each slot does distinct work. Constraints as the raw material every design manipulates.
Read Schauer (1991); Ostrom (2009), ch. 5; Damonte & Bazzan (2024).
*S16 - Institutional grammars*
Can a paragraph of law be parsed as precisely as a sentence of grammar?
Decomposing an institutional statement into its slots. From Crawford & Ostrom's ADICO to Institutional Grammar 2.0, and the revisions driven by computational tractability.
Read Crawford & Ostrom (1995); Frantz & Siddiki (2021).
*S17 - Coding the law*
When two coders read the same statute, will they extract the same rules?
The codebook in practice. Fixing the atomic statement as the unit of analysis; using the Boolean operators within and between statements; capturing 'or else' consequences. Inter-coder reliability as the discipline that makes rules-as-data replicable.
Read Brady et al. (2018); course codebook.
*S18 - How rules configure action*
How do a handful of rules add up to a whole situation actors must navigate?
The Institutional Analysis and Development typology, and how functions they constitute an action situation — cooperative, competitive, mixed or tragic. Assigning functions from the coded aIm and its verb family. Reading the resulting constraints as the levers a designer actually pulls.
Read Ostrom (2005), Understanding Institutional Diversity, ch. 7.
*S19 - Institutions in time — synthesis*
Rules rarely die outright — so how do they actually change?
Diachronic analysis of institutional statements: establishment, redefinition, abrogation and delegation tracked across successive versions of a text. Gradual change through layering and drift, and the quiet 'unrules' — dispensations and carve-outs — that relax obligations without formal repeal.
Read Walter et al. (2021); Mahoney & Thelen (2010).
*S20 - Q&A*
PN The program is provisional; changes will be visible on the Ariel platform
Over forty hours you move through the full arc of the designer's craft. You learn to diagnose a policy problem by reconstructing the social mechanisms that produce it; to design an intervention by matching instruments to the behavior of target populations; and to formalize that intervention as rules whose constraints can be read, coded, and even simulated.
**Module I — Diagnose**
Reconstruct why a policy problem persists: institutions, behavior, and the social mechanisms of Coleman's micro-macro boat. Ends with a theory of change.
*S01 - The design stance*
If a policy is a bet about cause and effect, what exactly are we betting on?
Public policy reframed as a set of causal theories rather than a bundle of intentions or documents. We separate the instrument, its objectives, and the assumptions that link them, and adopt the designer's stance: getting something we want by intervening on something we can control. The course map, the portfolio you will build, and the standards by which a design is judged.
Read Easton (1957), An approach to the analysis of political systems.
*S02 - Structuring policy problems*
Does a policy problem exist in the world, or in the way we frame it?
How framing and boundary work turn a diffuse social condition into a governable problem — and how each framing quietly pre-commits a family of solutions. Wicked problems and their resistance to any definitive formulation. Choosing a target population and a point of attack, and why that choice is already half the design.
Read Schmidt (2010), Taking ideas and discourse seriously.
*S03 - Institutions & behavior*
Why do people follow rules?
The two great answers: the calculus account, where rules stabilize expectations and reshape payoffs, and the culture account, where rules furnish taken-for-granted scripts and identities. The four neoinstitutionalisms as complementary lenses on the same behavior. How each lens locates the causes a designer can actually act on.
Read Falleti & Lynch (2009), Context and causal mechanisms.
*S04 - Social mechanisms I — the micro-macro link*
How can a macro-level problem be explained without a macro-level cause?
Coleman's boat as the engine of a diagnosis: descend from a macro condition to the situation actors face, cross to how they form action, and ascend to the macro outcome their choices produce. The three mechanisms — situational, action-formation, transformational — laid out in turn. Why a macro correlation demands micro-foundations to be more than description.
Read Hedström & Ylikoski (2010); Coleman (1990), ch. 1.
*S05 - Social mechanisms II — compliance & transformation*
When individual compliance adds up, does it always add up the way we expect?
Action formation under formal institutions through belief-desire-opportunity(-capacity) schemes. The transformational step reconsidered as the aggregation of (non-)compliance rather than institution-free emergence. Compliance cascades, tipping and threshold effects that produce surprising aggregate outcomes.
Read Olejniczak & Sliwowski (2015), Behaviourally informed interventions.
*S06 - Theories of change & logic models*
What has to be true for this intervention to work — and how would we know if it isn't?
Program theory as the explicit chain from inputs and activities to outputs, outcomes and impact. Surfacing the assumptions and risks on which each link depends, and reading them as testable claims. The crucial distinction between an implementation failure and a theory failure.
Read Funnell & Rogers (2011), Purposeful Program Theory, ch. 1-2.
*S07 - Studio I — a policy diagnosis*
Can you defend every arrow in your own boat?
A working session on Deliverable 1: each group presents a Coleman's-boat diagnosis of a self-chosen problem for structured peer critique. Clinics on identifying a homogeneous target population, justifying each mechanism from the literature, and drawing a diagram that genuinely improves readability. Common failure modes — implicit populations, hand-waved links, cyclical boats — diagnosed live.
Read — studio; bring a candidate problem.
**Module II — Design**
Move from problem to intervention. The full toolbox — sticks, carrots and sermons, plus organization and procedure — matched to how target populations behave.
*S08 - The instruments of public action*
Given a problem, how many genuinely different ways does government have to act on it?
The move from problem to intervention. Carrots, sticks and sermons as the organizing typology of substantive tools; McDonnell & Elmore's reading of tools as situational triggers; and Schneider & Ingram's insight that every instrument rests on a behavioral assumption about the target's capacity and willingness. Choosing a tool by matching, not by default or habit.
Read Bemelmans-Videc et al. (2010), Carrots, Sticks & Sermons, ch. 1; Salamon (2001).
*S09 - Sticks — mandates & regulation*
When is coercion the right instrument rather than the lazy one?
Prohibiting and prescribing under authority — standards, rules and mandates that assume capacity but not willingness. The costs they carry: monitoring and enforcement, uniformity imposed across heterogeneous cases, and adversarial state-citizen relations. The conditions under which a stick is both effective and legitimate, and the temptation to over-use it.
Read Schneider & Ingram (1990), Behavioral assumptions of policy tools.
*S10 - Carrots — taxation & expenditure*
If we can't forbid a behavior, can we simply make it cost more?
Rewarding and penalizing to reshape the payoffs of alternative actions. Negative externalities, and the routes to internalizing a cost. Incentive design and its characteristic pathology — goal displacement, where actors optimize the metric rather than the aim.
Read Bemelmans-Videc et al. (2010), Carrots, Sticks & Sermons, part II.
*S11 - Sermons — information & nudges*
Can telling people stories, or rearranging their choices, count as governing?
Persuasion, mandatory disclosure and choice architecture as instruments in their own right. Behaviorally-informed interventions, and the ethical line between helping a choice and manipulating it. John's provocation that, in an information age, every tool is becoming informational — and what that does to the older typologies of public action.
Read John (2013), All tools are informational now.
*S12 - Organization & system-changing tools*
What do we reach for when carrots, sticks and sermons all fail?
Direct provision and public organization; capacity-building that widens what actors are able to do; and meta-tools that reshuffle the game itself — reallocating authority, creating agencies, changing who decides. The uncertain payoffs of building capacity.
Read Howlett (2000), Managing the hollow state.
*S13 - Procedural tools & participation*
Who gets to be in the room, and does it change what comes out?
Tools that shape how a policy is made rather than what it directly does. The democracy cube — who participates, how they communicate and decide, and with what consequence for public action. Co-design, deliberation and the democratic-deficit critique. Why procedure can decide the legitimacy and effectiveness of every substantive tool deployed through it.
Read Fung (2006), Varieties of participation.
*S14 - Studio II — tool mixes & packaging*
Does your instrument actually trigger the mechanism you diagnosed?
A working session on Deliverable 2. Matching each tool to the specific mechanism it is meant to fire; calibrating its intensity; and sequencing and bundling instruments into a coherent package free of internal contradiction. Peer critique focused squarely on the fit between the behavioural assumptions invoked and the change the design expects.
**Module III — Formalise - Institutional grammar & the anatomy of constraints**
Render the instrument precise. Read policy instruments as rules, parse them with institutional grammar, and analyze how their constraints configure the action situation — text made coded, comparable and computationally tractable.
*S15 - Policy tools as rules*
What is the difference between a rule you must obey and a suggestion you may ignore?
The substantive tools designed in Module II, seen up close, are rules — and every rule has an anatomy: if X, then you must or may (not) do Y, or else Z, unless X′, and each slot does distinct work. Constraints as the raw material every design manipulates.
Read Schauer (1991); Ostrom (2009), ch. 5; Damonte & Bazzan (2024).
*S16 - Institutional grammars*
Can a paragraph of law be parsed as precisely as a sentence of grammar?
Decomposing an institutional statement into its slots. From Crawford & Ostrom's ADICO to Institutional Grammar 2.0, and the revisions driven by computational tractability.
Read Crawford & Ostrom (1995); Frantz & Siddiki (2021).
*S17 - Coding the law*
When two coders read the same statute, will they extract the same rules?
The codebook in practice. Fixing the atomic statement as the unit of analysis; using the Boolean operators within and between statements; capturing 'or else' consequences. Inter-coder reliability as the discipline that makes rules-as-data replicable.
Read Brady et al. (2018); course codebook.
*S18 - How rules configure action*
How do a handful of rules add up to a whole situation actors must navigate?
The Institutional Analysis and Development typology, and how functions they constitute an action situation — cooperative, competitive, mixed or tragic. Assigning functions from the coded aIm and its verb family. Reading the resulting constraints as the levers a designer actually pulls.
Read Ostrom (2005), Understanding Institutional Diversity, ch. 7.
*S19 - Institutions in time — synthesis*
Rules rarely die outright — so how do they actually change?
Diachronic analysis of institutional statements: establishment, redefinition, abrogation and delegation tracked across successive versions of a text. Gradual change through layering and drift, and the quiet 'unrules' — dispensations and carve-outs — that relax obligations without formal repeal.
Read Walter et al. (2021); Mahoney & Thelen (2010).
*S20 - Q&A*
PN The program is provisional; changes will be visible on the Ariel platform
Prerequisites for admission
Sessions assume no special previous competencies.
Teaching methods
Policy Design is taught as a craft studio. Concepts are introduced to be put to work: every session opens with a driving question and closes on a worked example from a live policy debate, and the three deliverables are built incrementally, in class, on a problem each student owns. The design is constructively aligned — each mode of teaching serves a specific learning outcome and its matching deliverable.
*Concept sessions* (14 meetings). Frameworks presented against real cases. The driving question frames the session, a worked policy example anchors it, and short in-class exchanges test the idea before students carry it into their own work.
*Design studios* (S07; S14). Working meetings where a deliverable is assembled and critiqued, not presented finished. Students bring drafts; the convenor runs clinics; peers give and receive structured feedback against a shared rubric.
The running case (groupwork). Students work in small groups of three or four, each group carrying one self-chosen policy problem across all three deliverables so that diagnosis, design and formalization compound into a single coherent body of work. Groups are composed to mix backgrounds; the final brief is defended individually, so collaboration never dilutes personal accountability.
*Concept sessions* (14 meetings). Frameworks presented against real cases. The driving question frames the session, a worked policy example anchors it, and short in-class exchanges test the idea before students carry it into their own work.
*Design studios* (S07; S14). Working meetings where a deliverable is assembled and critiqued, not presented finished. Students bring drafts; the convenor runs clinics; peers give and receive structured feedback against a shared rubric.
The running case (groupwork). Students work in small groups of three or four, each group carrying one self-chosen policy problem across all three deliverables so that diagnosis, design and formalization compound into a single coherent body of work. Groups are composed to mix backgrounds; the final brief is defended individually, so collaboration never dilutes personal accountability.
Teaching Resources
Foundations & mechanisms
Easton, D. (1957). An approach to the analysis of political systems. World Politics.
Falleti, T. & Lynch, J. (2009). Context and causal mechanisms in political analysis. Comparative Political Studies.
Schmidt, V. (2010). Taking ideas and discourse seriously. European Political Science Review.
Funnell, S. & Rogers, P. (2011). Purposeful Program Theory. Jossey-Bass.
Instruments of public action
Schneider, A. & Ingram, H. (1990). Behavioral assumptions of policy tools. Journal of Politics.
Salamon, L. (2001). The new governance and the tools of public action. Fordham Urban Law Journal.
Bemelmans-Videc, M. et al. (2010). Carrots, Sticks & Sermons. Transaction.
John, P. (2013). All tools are informational now. Policy & Politics.
Howlett, M. (2000). Managing the hollow state. Canadian Public Administration.
Institutional grammar & the anatomy of constraints
Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton UP.
Crawford, S. & Ostrom, E. (1995). A grammar of institutions. American Political Science Review.
Frantz, C. & Siddiki, S. (2021). Institutional Grammar: Foundations and Applications. Springer.
Ferber, J., Gutknecht, O. & Michel, F. (2004). From agents to organizations. LNCS 2935.
Mahoney, J. & Thelen, K. (2010). A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change. Cambridge UP.
Damonte, A. & Bazzan, G. (2024). Rules as Data. Regulation and Governance.
A full reading pack with chapters, articles and lab notebooks is distributed session by session on the course platform.
Easton, D. (1957). An approach to the analysis of political systems. World Politics.
Falleti, T. & Lynch, J. (2009). Context and causal mechanisms in political analysis. Comparative Political Studies.
Schmidt, V. (2010). Taking ideas and discourse seriously. European Political Science Review.
Funnell, S. & Rogers, P. (2011). Purposeful Program Theory. Jossey-Bass.
Instruments of public action
Schneider, A. & Ingram, H. (1990). Behavioral assumptions of policy tools. Journal of Politics.
Salamon, L. (2001). The new governance and the tools of public action. Fordham Urban Law Journal.
Bemelmans-Videc, M. et al. (2010). Carrots, Sticks & Sermons. Transaction.
John, P. (2013). All tools are informational now. Policy & Politics.
Howlett, M. (2000). Managing the hollow state. Canadian Public Administration.
Institutional grammar & the anatomy of constraints
Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton UP.
Crawford, S. & Ostrom, E. (1995). A grammar of institutions. American Political Science Review.
Frantz, C. & Siddiki, S. (2021). Institutional Grammar: Foundations and Applications. Springer.
Ferber, J., Gutknecht, O. & Michel, F. (2004). From agents to organizations. LNCS 2935.
Mahoney, J. & Thelen, K. (2010). A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change. Cambridge UP.
Damonte, A. & Bazzan, G. (2024). Rules as Data. Regulation and Governance.
A full reading pack with chapters, articles and lab notebooks is distributed session by session on the course platform.
Assessment methods and Criteria
Assessment is a cumulative portfolio, not a single exam: working in small groups, students carry one self-chosen policy problem through the whole arc — diagnosis, design, and formalization — each deliverable scaffolded in a studio and the final brief defended individually. Students leave with three linked artefacts that contribute to illustrating proficiency.
*Deliverable 1 - Diagnose* (30%)
A written analysis of a self-chosen policy problem reconstructed through Coleman's boat — its situational, action-formation and transformational mechanisms — with an annotated diagram and each mechanism justified from the literature.
*Deliverable 2 - Design* (30%)
A theory of change intervening on the same problem: selection and calibration of carrots, sticks, sermons and procedural tools against the behavioural assumptions each invokes, a model figure, and the ethical and practical trade-offs.
*Deliverable 3 - Formalise & Defend* (30%)
The core rule of the design rendered in institutional-grammar form, a reading of how its constraints configure the action situation, and the gaps or loopholes the coding exposes — presented and defended orally at the final colloquium.
*Studio participation* (10%)
Continuous, all modules
Engaged contribution to the two studios and to structured peer critique, including a written review of another group's diagnosis.
**Grading criteria.**
Each deliverable is assessed on the coherence of its reasoning, the fit between the instruments or rules it chooses and the behavioral assumptions they invoke, the clarity and accuracy of its models and diagrams, and the quality of written and visual communication.
*Deliverable 1 - Diagnose* (30%)
A written analysis of a self-chosen policy problem reconstructed through Coleman's boat — its situational, action-formation and transformational mechanisms — with an annotated diagram and each mechanism justified from the literature.
*Deliverable 2 - Design* (30%)
A theory of change intervening on the same problem: selection and calibration of carrots, sticks, sermons and procedural tools against the behavioural assumptions each invokes, a model figure, and the ethical and practical trade-offs.
*Deliverable 3 - Formalise & Defend* (30%)
The core rule of the design rendered in institutional-grammar form, a reading of how its constraints configure the action situation, and the gaps or loopholes the coding exposes — presented and defended orally at the final colloquium.
*Studio participation* (10%)
Continuous, all modules
Engaged contribution to the two studios and to structured peer critique, including a written review of another group's diagnosis.
**Grading criteria.**
Each deliverable is assessed on the coherence of its reasoning, the fit between the instruments or rules it chooses and the behavioral assumptions they invoke, the clarity and accuracy of its models and diagrams, and the quality of written and visual communication.
GSPS-02/A - Political Science - University credits: 6
Lessons: 40 hours
Professor:
Damonte Alessia
Shifts:
Turno
Professor:
Damonte AlessiaProfessor(s)
Reception:
Friday 11:00-12:00 (undergraduate students) - 15.00-17.00 (thesis and graduate students) | PN on June, 26 I'll be out of office
internal building, 2nd floor, room 12 | VirtualOffice channel in Teams