Course overview
This course covers key political and policy issues for the 21st century with a particular emphasis on the factors that shape domestic government policies. It focuses on issues of economic, social and environmental change and their political implications in fields ranging from economics, foreign relations and the media to the environment and welfare. It also examines how Australian democracy is constituted, practiced and perpetuated, and how policy problems are identified and constituted. In the process, the course deals with issues such as: globalisation and the role of the nation state; the electoral system and the role of citizens in Australian democracy and policy-making; the role of leaders, political parties and the media in policy formation; economic factors, social movements and environmental politics and climate change. The course draws on relevant analytical and theoretical frameworks and encourages students to follow up their own research interests, including relevant ones not formally covered in the course.
There is a particular emphasis on the applied and practical aspects of how and why government policies are brought into being as well as the social, political and economic factors that enable or constrain their introduction.
Course learning outcomes
- Analyse the major concepts and debates in political thinking relating to issues in Australian politics.
- Understand the relevant social, historical, economic, ideological and international context and constraints in which those debates occur and political institutions function.
- Work with a range of analytical approaches to issues in Australian Politics and reflect critically on the character of political concepts and issues.
- Critically analyse government policy-making.
- Discuss the political, social and economic factors that guide and constrain government policies and practices.
- Undertake independent research in the field of Australian public policy and practice.
- Engage in oral and written public debate on real world case studies which exemplify general principles about policy-making and government practice.
- Produce analytically sophisticated, well substantiated and cogently argued written material that draws on actual policy outcomes in recent Australian political history.