Public Policy

Terms offered: Fall 2020
During the fall 2020 semester we will have the quadrennial opportunity to study American politics during a presidential campaign. Combining real-time analysis of the election, an in-depth study of the relevant historical and sociological trends that are shaping this moment, and a lively roster of guest speakers from across the Berkeley campus and community, this class will provide students with a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction to American politics in a time of unprecedented crisis and possibility.
THE 2020 ELECTION: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Spring 2016
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 freshmen.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2012
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower-division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester. Enrollment limits are set by the faculty, but the suggested limit is 25.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
Group study on selected public policy topics. Open to freshmen and sophomores.
Group Study in Public Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 8 Week Session
A systematic and critical approach to evaluating and designing public policies. Combines theory and application to particular cases and problems. Diverse policy topics, including environmental, health, education, communications, safety, and arts policy issues, among others.
Introduction to Public Policy Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2009, Spring 2008
This course is designed to provide students with a deeper understanding both of the structure of political economy and of why the distribution of earnings, wealth, and opportunity have been diverging in the United States and in other nations. It is also intended to provide insight into the political and public policy debates that have arisen in light of the divergence as well as possible means of reversing it.
Wealth and Poverty: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
This course is designed to provide students with a deeper understanding both of the organization of the political economy in the United States and of other advanced economies, and of why the distribution of earnings, wealth, and opportunity have been diverging in the United States and in other nations. It also is intended to provide insights into the political and public-policy debates that have arisen in light of this divergence, as well as possible means of reversing it.
Wealth and Poverty: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
The objective of this course is to improve negotiation skills and to increase the ability to resolve conflicts in a multitude of situations, including public policy disputes. Topics will include: distributive and integrative bargaining; preparation strategies; defense to ploys; power and perceptions; team and multi-party negotiations; political, legislative and regulatory negotiations; emotions and gender, email negotiations, handling difficult negotiators, impact of personality traits and public policy mediation. Simulated negotiation exercises and role-plays will be used extensively.

Negotiations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
The objective of this course is to use the tools and insights of public policy analysis as a means of understanding the ways in which policies are shaped by and respond to issues of race, ethnicity, and cultural difference. The course is organized around a series of discrete policy problems involving issues of race and ethnicity. It is designed to allow for comparative analysis within and across cases to explore the variety of ways in which policy intersects with different racial and ethnic groups.
Race, Ethnicity, and Public Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022
This course will survey societal challenges that are fundamentally global in nature, in contrast to challenges that are more effectively addressed by domestic policies. The goal of the course is to understand the cause and structure of a broad set of global challenges, with an eye towards eventually participating in their management or resolution. The first part provides foundations for understanding the governance context in which global challenges emerge. The second part of the course examines individual topic areas, building students’ knowledge of modern issues and policy debates. Topics may include, but not limited to the governance of oceans; poverty and development; scientific research and technology transfer; international aid.
Global Challenges: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course introduces a range of economic phenomena that cannot be explained by standard, fully rational economic models, and explores implications for public policy. Why do we vote for social security despite the fact that it reduces our freedom to choose how we spend our money? What would happen to job seeking behavior if we cut off unemployment benefits in multiple steps? Why do fines work better than bonuses (except when they don't)? What kinds of policies should the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau implement? Behavioral Economics provides answers to these questions that standard economics does not.

Behavioral Economics for Public Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Spring 2020
This course focuses on the sensible application of econometric methods to empirical problems in economics and public policy analysis. It provides background on issues that arise when analyzing non-experimental social science data and a guide for tools that are useful for empirical research. By the end of the course, students will have an understanding of the types of research designs that can lead to convincing analysis and be comfortable working with large scale data sets.
Applied Econometrics and Public Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course introduces students to the arena of security policy. Students will learn the origins and evolution of the governing framework for security policy in the United States, including the post-9/11 creation of Homeland Security, and key methodologies of security policy, including risk assessment. The course will evaluate the variety of scales at which security policy is enacted, from state/local to federal and even international. The course delves into defining security dilemmas of the present: the challenge of securing democracy against both internal and external threats; the challenge of cybersecurity in a networked world; and global climate change. The course concludes with a required one-day crisis simulation exercise.
Introduction to Security Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2016, Fall 2011
Studio/laboratory in the design of nonphysical environments. Complements courses in policy analysis, public management, economics, and political science; especially intended to integrate elements of professional programs in public policy and related areas. Students will design, in groups and individually, programs and policies that create value in the public sector, including statutes, regulations, and implementation projects. Comparative reviews will feature invited guests. Undergraduate level of 256.
Program and Policy Design: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
Survey of government policy toward the arts (especially direct subsidy, copyright and regulation, and indirect assistance) and its effects on artists, audiences, and institutions. Emphasizes "highbrow" arts, U.S. policy, and the social and economic roles of participants in the arts. Readings, field trips, and case discussion. One paper in two drafts required for undergraduate credit; graduate credit awarded for an additional short paper to be arranged and attendance at four advanced colloquia throughout the term. Undergraduate level of 257.
Arts and Cultural Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2013
Survey of government policy toward the arts (especially direct subsidy, copyright and regulation, and indirect assistance) and its effects on artists, audiences, and institutions. Emphasizes "highbrow" arts, U.S. policy, and the social and economic roles of participants in the arts. Readings, field trips, and case discussion. One paper in two drafts required for undergraduate credit; graduate credit awarded for an additional short paper to be arranged and attendance at four advanced colloquia throughout the term. Undergraduate level of 257.
Arts and Cultural Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2020
This course provides a broad, inter-disciplinary overview of the U.S. labor movement in the fight for social and economic justice. It will introduce students to critiques of racial capitalism and the power dynamics inherent in paid work, while considering why and how workers form unions in response. One of the primary objectives of this course is to develop a theoretical and analytical understanding of contemporary workers’ experiences of work in the U.S. shaped by race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, language, religion, and other social constructs. There will be a special comparative focus on the role of structures and the space for agency and mobilization in the Latinx, Black and Asian American communities.
Work, Justice and the Labor Movement: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2021
This fieldstudy course is designed for undergraduates/graduates who have an interest in social/economic justice, and seek to earn academic credit while gaining exp in organizing. Building upon the Labor Center’s Summer program, it allows students to apply existing organizing skills/acquire new knowledge in community and labor organizations. Students will be matched with our community partners that promote the interests of Bay area working families. Classroom-based guided reflection, skills development, career information, and engagement with current debates will complement the fieldwork. This exp can open the door to life-long careers as organizers, researchers, policy analysts, political lobbyists, communication specialists and leaders.
Field Study in Labor Organizing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2007
Examination of the impact of policies of state intervention and public benefit programs on poor children and families. Introduction to child and family policy, and study of specific issue areas, such as income transfer programs, housing, health care, and child abuse.
Impact of Government Policies on Poor Children and Families: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023
This course is an introduction to social science research methods that center principles of equity and justice connecting the Berkeley Changemaker L&S 12 to the discipline of public policy in the field of work and employment relations. It is based on the premise that the COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to reshape the economy for a fair, inclusive, and democratic society with the participation of people typically excluded from policy development. Currently, young workers are at the helm of transforming the labor market by leading union organizing at workplaces. This course examines the position, attitudes, and interests of young workers through the lens of critical race theory, feminist and queer theory, and disability justice.
Berkeley Changemaker: Labor Research for Action and Policy (L-RAP): Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This course will examine the nature and extent of poverty in the U.S., its causes and consequences, and the antipoverty effects of existing and proposed
government programs and policies. The first ten weeks of this course focuses on social science theory and evidence about the causes,
consequences and costs of poverty. The last four weeks of the course examines child poverty policies, employment policies, and setting an overall agenda for poverty policy.

Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Energy sources, uses, and impacts: an introduction to the technology, politics, economics, and environmental effects of energy in contemporary society. Energy and well-being; energy in international perspective, origins, and character of energy crisis.
Energy and Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 8 Week Session, Summer 2023 8 Week Session, Summer 2022 8 Week Session
Energy sources, uses, and impacts: an introduction to the technology, politics, economics, and environmental effects of energy in contemporary society. Energy and well-being; energy in international perspective, origins, and character of energy crisis.
Energy and Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
The class focuses on the economic regulation of electricity and natural gas and its role in public policy innovation. We will explore the regulatory rationale in the context of microeconomic principles, the nature and evolution of energy technology and regulation in the United States, and the ways to advance public policy objectives. The class covers the alternatives to traditional cost-of-service rate regulation, the electricity deregulation experiment, the resulting energy crisis in California, and current efforts to reconsider the utility business model. We will delve into how the economic regulatory framework creates opportunities to implement public policy, and the enhanced role climate change now plays in decision making worldwide.
Energy Regulation and Public Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020
In this interdisciplinary course students examine the relationships among social science, law, and crime prevention policy. Emphasis is placed on how psychological science (clinical, developmental, social) can inform decisions about individuals at high risk for repeated involvement in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Topics of focus include risk assessment, adolescent development and juvenile justice, and prevention/intervention/correctional psychology. Students will have an opportunity to master a specific problem area. Broadly, goals are for students to a) become comfortable in translating crime prevention problems into social scientific questions, and b) specifically understand how research findings can inform law and policy.
Social Science & Crime Prevention Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Course examines current problems and issues in the field of public policy. Topics may vary from year to year and will be announced at the beginning of the semester. Open to students from other departments.
Special Topics in Public Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Spring 2020
This class will provide students with a grounding in the literature of social movement theory and history, with a special emphasis on social movements led by African American, Latinx, indigenous, and Asian Pacific Islander communities for equity. The class will also introduce students to the basics of social movement organizing, including mobilizing unlikely voters through organizing technique, and the theory of nonviolent direct action, all with a focus on race and gender equity.
Social Movements, Organizing & Policy Change: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Group study of a selected topic or topics in Public Policy. Meetings to be arranged.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2020
For upper division students wishing to pursue special study and directed research under direction of a member of the staff. Enrollment restrictions apply; see the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of this catalog.
Supervised Independent Study and Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This practicum is an applied research training course that accompanies PUBPOL 160AC Work, Justice, and the Labor Movement and connects the Berkeley Changemaker L&S 12 to the discipline of public policy. It is designed to provide a robust training in research methods and community engagement with worker organizations to inform policies for a fair, inclusive, and democratic society. The practicum integrates elements of quantitative and qualitative research methods in a semester-long service-learning project in partnership with a worker organization. Students will work in teams to collect and analyze data thematically, and learn to use digital tools to disseminate the research findings to various audiences.
Berkeley Changemaker: Labor Research for Action and Policy (L-RAP): Read More [+]