78140 - Decision Making Models and Institutional Change

Course contents

This course covers from both an analytical and an empirical perspective the models developed in political science scholarship to explain decision making processes, devoting high attention to the concepts of rationality involved into them. The empirical field considered herein will be that of individual behaviors as well as that of collective decisions. Once the course has covered these topics, a selection of processes of institutional change will be considered in terms of patterns of change, rationale of change, and ways of combining individual decisions, intentional consequences and non-intentional consequences entailed by these latter.

More precisely, at the individual level the course will consider decisions concerning the path of institutional careers and the judicial decisions. At the collective level, the decision taken by the constitutional courts will be analyzed. Concerning the patterns of change the topic addressed consists into the adaptation of the democratic institutions to the economic crisis, with specific attention to the reforms of the public sector.

Readings/Bibliography

J. Mahoney and K. Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change, 2010.

E. Ostrom, Governing the Commons, CUP. 1990.

C. Dallara, D. Piana, Networking the Rule of Law, London, Ashgate, 2015.

 

A specific and more focused reference list will be discussed individually and with reference to the final paper.  

 

Teaching methods

Traditional method

Analysis of official documents

Working groups

Assessment methods

Students are asked to submit a final paper where a process of institutional change is analyzed on the basis of the concepts presented in the course.

 

The final paper will cover one among the following topics

1. reforms recently adopted

2. processes of organizational innovation unfolded into a public institution or in a public sector

Teaching tools

Power point

External experts

Office hours

See the website of Daniela Piana