Development policies

The course aims to provide students with a solid foundation in the key issues shaping the contemporary debate on development and the policies designed to promote it. This objective is pursued through four main dimensions:
1. To provide an understanding of the historical evolution of development theories, from their origins to the current international agenda, with particular emphasis on human development, sustainable development, and the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
2. To critically examine the processes through which development policies are designed and implemented at the national and local levels, paying particular attention to sectoral interactions, participatory approaches, the respective roles of public institutions, civil society and the private sector, and the international interdependencies generated by globalisation.
3. To provide the knowledge and analytical skills needed to understand the main trends in Financing for Development, including the available channels for resource mobilisation, their constraints and opportunities, and the current international framework for development finance.
4. To analyse the interconnections between global governance, national policies, the role of international actors, development policies, human rights and peace.
These objectives will be pursued through lectures and the analysis of official documents produced by the United Nations and national governments, particularly policy, planning and evaluation documents. Students will also participate in group work and present the results of their analyses during the course.

By the end of the course, students will have acquired the knowledge and critical analytical skills required to understand independently the international debate on sustainable development.
They will be able to critically analyse policy and planning documents produced by governments, assess policy coherence, evaluate their consistency with the United Nations 2030 Agenda and other international commitments, and identify the main opportunities, constraints and trade-offs related to policy implementation and Financing for Development.
Students will demonstrate these competences through group work carried out during the course and through the final examination, in which they will be required to analyse an official government policy document, identify its main issues, and propose an analytical framework for its evaluation.
The knowledge acquired during the course will also provide students with the foundation for further study and research in areas such as sustainability, intersectoral linkages, Financing for Development, global governance, and the relationships between development, human rights and peace.