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Crawford School of Public Policy · ANU College of Law, Governance and Policy
On-campus & remote (online) learning available. Students participate in interactive, real-time classes. This course aims to provide both a macro view of welfare state debates in Australia and internationally – including Asia and the Pacific, as well as Europe and North America – and also develop skills in undertaking quantitative analysis of selected major policy issues such as the causes of the growth of public spending, measures to control expenditure growth, and how to analyse the effectiveness of welfare state spending, particularly in relation to impacts on income distribution (inequality and income poverty), as well as unintended consequences. Emphasis is on a comparative approach. Questions to be addressed include: How expensive is the Welfare State? How effective is the Welfare State? Is the Welfare State sustainable? Are social protection programmes transferrable?
One data analysis exercise undertaken in class (10% )
Learning outcomes 1, 2
Short essay (2000 words) on a contemporary social policy topic
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3
Major Essay (3,500 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
The standard workload for a 6 unit course is 130 hours including in class time and independent study.
The main textbook for this course is the Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State (2010) Castles et al. (eds) available online at https://library.anu.edu.au/record=b3063199 or at http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579396.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199579396 The chapters to be read are identified in Wattle. It is expected that students read the required weekly readings before each session. Preliminary Reading Further resources will be identified in the topics section in Wattle, which are usually longer than the required readings.