Comparative Policy Process
Faculty
F. Kubo
Y. Nakayama
N. Isozaki
Description
This course will address policy process, broadly defined, from a comparative
perspective. This year the course will pick up three countries (the United
States, the Republic of Korea, and the French Republic) for a case study,
each of which has a presidential government in common, and aim to compare
each policy process systematically by providing the suitable examples of
same policy fields in each country, such as diplomacy, budget, welfare,
environment, and agriculture.
Some of the important topics are as follows; the institutional framework
that constrains the behavioral pattern of the actors, the characteristics
and the nature of bureaucracy, political culture, the contour and functions
of political parties and interest groups, the capacity and expertise of
the public and private sectors to manufacture policy ideas such as think
tanks and interest groups, and the historical background of each country
or each policy area.
The lecture of this course will be given in an
omnibus style as shown below (each part has four classes). The course is
going to be topped and tailed by two collaborate sessions by these three
professors.
The first part: The United States (by Professor Fumiaki Kubo)
The second part: South Korea (by Professor Noriyo Isozaki)
The third part: France (by Professor Yohei Nakayama)
The objectives of the course are not just to study and compare the policy
process of these countries with presidential system, but also to let the
students be exposed to models and theories of comparative politics so far
as policy process is concerned. In addition, implicit in almost all the
explanations in class is the comparison with the policy process of Japan
.
Therefore, students are expected to have a keen understanding of the Japanese
policy process. Also crucial is the fact that policy process is all the
more important if it is directly related to the substance of the policy.