A substantial amount of scholarly work focuses on conceptualizing, theorizing and studying the policy capacity of governments. Yet, guidance for practitioners on developing policy capacity training programs is lacking. In this article, I reflect on my experience as a public servant in the provincial government of Prince Edward Island where I…

Public policy education has rapidly spread among universities worldwide and in Turkey in the last few decades. Despite this spread, it is a question mark what competencies this education promises to future public policy analysts in today's complex economic, social, and political environment. This study first investigates the rising expectations…

Drawing on the extensive ethnographic research I conducted on Italy's performance evaluation system, this article highlights the cognitive biases associated with evidence use in decision making and institution working. Framing effects, status quo bias, motivated reasoning, and tacit conflicts between personal and organizational interests were only…

If the aim of developing public policies is to solve social issues, it is worth asking whether the higher education programs for future public servants are being adapted to the demands of our societies. If we also recognize a relationship between education and political capacity, then it is pertinent to study the development of knowledge, skills,…

Background: Seeing how governments formulate decisions on our behalf is a crucial component of their ability to claim democratic legitimacy. This includes being seen to draw on the knowledge and evidence produced by their civil service policy advisers. Yet much of the advice provided to governments is being increasingly withdrawn from public…

This article presents the discussion and the conclusion of an "EERJ" Special Issue on accountability policy forms in four European educational systems aimed at identifying how global schemes and instruments of accountability are integrated into national governance patterns. The comparative discussion indicates that accountability…

When crises occur, revisiting given knowledge and practices seems sensible and necessary. For instance, the recent financial crisis in 2008 lead to questioning the role played by financial institutions and business schools in precipitating the crisis by allowing questionable professional ethics to go unchallenged. There is a current crisis in…

Public policy is frequently characterised as a sub-discipline of political science which is practically oriented and concerned with what government does and does not do. Further, policy analysis can also be characterised as concerned with either the analysis 'of policy' or 'for policy'. This clearly has implications for the design and delivery of…

In recent decades civil services worldwide have experienced exogenous forces that are transforming their work and workplace. In turn, these changes are altering the skills set associated with civil service employment. As professional degrees oriented towards careers in civil service these changes can have important ramifications on the curriculum.…

This chapter outlines the instruments approach to studying European governance used in this book. It draws from public administration, political science and public policy literature that (1) evaluates the effects of policy instruments, (2) appreciates the choice of policy instruments and (3) unpacks the process through which policy instrumentation…

Contemporary public management in Brazil is undergoing a great deal of transformation. From the year 2008 the Brazilian Federal government has been investing in policies and planned actions that aim to expand access to Higher Education. This paradigm shift was possible through the understanding that the agenda of public problems required trained…

There have been few studies on topic difficulty in the public administration curriculum of African universities. This is further problematized by non-existent literature on the relationships between gender, future career interest and country of study on student difficulty in the study of public administration. This is a gap in the public…

This paper draws on nine years of undergraduate student course evaluation surveys to explore learning and teaching practices in an introductory public policy course in Australia. The paper situates student responses in terms of an increasingly complex teaching and learning environment. The student cohort includes a diverse group of arts, law,…

Promoting understanding of quality in the context of good governance can be a challenging classroom exercise not only because of the potential for hijacking politicization of the discussion, but also because of the variety of ways in which public sector goals can be defined, even in the context of a single policy. Standards of quality in the…

Since rural Canada contributes about one-third of the national economy and significantly to culture, we argue it deserves greater attention in public policy, beginning with policy education. A scan of 22 Canadian Masters of Public Policy (MPP) and Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs reveals a marked absence of policy training focused on…