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2026-27

Modern Challenges to Governance

I gave this course for the first time in the winter of 2017. It covers a range of challenges, such as climate change, globalization, inequality, the influence of money on politics, and so on. Here’s the introductory blurb from the course outline:

“What is real is what you have to deal with, what won’t go away just because it doesn’t fit with your prejudices.”

Charles Taylor (Sources of the self, 59).

“Nous courons sans souci dans le précipice, après que nous avons mis quelque chose devant nous pour nous empêcher de le voir.” [“We run carefree into the precipice, having put something in front of us to hide it from sight.”]

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, ¶183.)

“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

Joni Mitchell (Big Yellow Taxi)

“‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

                                                                      J.R.R. Tolkien (The fellowship of the ring)

“Extend and pretend” describes a behaviour frequently used in financial markets. What happens, for example, when a borrower cannot repay a bank loan? If the bank classifies the loan as a bad one, it takes a loss on its books, and the officials who agreed to the loan look bad. What to do? One can extend: extend to the borrower a new loan to pay back the old one. And pretend: pretend that somehow or other the causes of the borrower’s failure will go away. And so the challenge of dealing with the problem is simply booted forward in time, for someone else to deal with, sometime or other.

The broader political analogies of this behaviour are clear. In the world of politics and policy many actors have an interest in simply extending current practices, and pretending that serious challenges aren’t real. And there are few incentives within the political and bureaucratic systems of modern democracies to encourage taking a long view, and building policy around that.

So one of the personal challenges you will face should you dwell in the world of politics and policy is that you will find there’s a “whole lot of pretendin’ going on.” You need to reflect upon how you will handle that. Much is at stake: the pretending can protect certain narrow personal goods: getting reelected, for the politician, staying out of trouble, for the civil servant. But it also threatens many things of great value. To counter this, you will need critical thinking, the ability to detect the many ways we refuse to engage with reality, and also appreciative thinking, the ability to identify those important goods that are worth defending.

Qualitative Methods for Public Policy

Course outline introduction:

Methods teaching is often carved into distinct quantitative and qualitative courses. This division is regrettable, primarily because it can lead to an overly narrow quantitative pedagogy, focussing on technique and neglecting judgment.

This course aims to correct for that, examining the qualitative dimension of all research. Thus, we will be looking at traditional qualitative methods, such as interviews and observation. But we will also be considering the qualitative aspects of quantitative research. Even the most intimidating quantitative study involves vital qualitative judgments: What variable should be allowed to “stand in” for the phenomenon one really wants to measure, but cannot? How should survey questions be worded and sequenced?

More generally, this course will consider questions such as: what kinds of knowledge can be gained with different research strategies? What are the respective strengths and limitations of these strategies? What sorts of human judgments underlie any research work?