Political Feasibility Analysis: Winning Strategies in Public Policy

This course will review and analyze various strategies for assessing the political feasibility of successfully implementing public policies at the federal, state and local levels. The course will utilize real world case studies to demonstrate the viability of the political feasibility analysis model to win in the endgame.

Enacting public policy is a dynamic process because of the changing nature of the political environment. Developing successful public policy requires an array of strategic approaches, analytical tools and resources, as well as understanding the importance of timing, historical precedents and key pressure points in the political system.

This course will analyze successful and unsuccessful campaigns to bring about public policy change at all levels of government. Students will analyze various policy strategies put forth in the course to include inclusionary, exclusionary and persuasive models. A focus area for the course will be the use of social media as a powerful tool to foster social change and impact the political environment.

Students will examine various types of policy domains at the legislative, executive and bureaucratic levels. The course will analyze the impact of indirect policy makers outside of government such as lobbyists, public interest groups, unions, media, public relations firms, business groups, faith-based organizations and individual activists, among others.

By the end of the course, students will be adept at assessing the political feasibility of implementing current public policies under debate at all levels of government and to evaluate the risk and opportunities in pursuing a particular course of action.

Reading materials for the course will include Harvard Kennedy School of Government policy case studies and chapter readings from numerous books and articles.

The instructor will include additional reading materials on several important case studies where he played a leadership role in developing the strategies for various public policy campaigns, including urban affairs, health care, farm bill reform, veteran’s affairs and others. Students also will be required to read materials on current national and local issues for class discussions. There will be two or three guest speakers which may include legislators, journalists, lobbyists, public interest groups, and public affairs consultants, among others.

The structure for course will center on case study analysis, work study groups and class participation. Students will be called upon to integrate the skills and draw upon analytical tools gained from other core curriculum. Group presentations will be a major element of the course so that students are grounded in how to use the political feasibility model as an analytical tool in the real world of public policy after graduation.