12039 Workshop: Writing a Policy Paper 1
Credits: 3 graduate credits in Democracy Studies / Government and Public Policy
Prerequisites: Democracy: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Israeli Democracy: Selected Issues, Contemporary Democratic Theories; one of the following: Democracy and Democratization, Selected Problems in the History of Western Democracies; Education Policy: Education for Democracy in Democratic Societies; Selected Topics in Public Administration; Democracy and Mass Communication,1 and exemption from bibliographic assignments on computer searches in the “Alef” catalog and databases.
The workshop is based on a guide to writing policy papers and on a reader edited by Yagil Levy and Eti Sarig.
The workshop aims to develop students’ ability to write a policy paper. A policy paper is a document that presents a practical problem in an area of public policy and outlines the preferred alternative to its solution in order to convince decision makers to adopt the recommended alternative. A policy paper differs from a standard academic paper in that it does not need to explain or analyze a phenomenon but suggests a mode of action that can be implemented.
The workshop trains students to identify a practical problem in the area of public policy relating to local government and to propose a solution in the form of a policy paper. Students submit the policy paper as the final course assignment (instead of a final examination).
1or Liberalism: Texts, Contexts, Critiques (12005), for students who took it as a required course in the Culture specialization before Spring 2010.