Comparative Public Policy MSc

Study Comparative Public Policy MSc at the University of Edinburgh. This programme will give you deep analytical training in the systematic comparison of social and public policies across regions, countries and systems. 

How do countries and regions across the globe navigate the most pressing public policy challenges? Thinking about public policy in comparative terms is second nature to any policy professional or scholar in Scotland. 

Here, home to the Scottish Parliament, we continuously compare policy processes and outcomes to others parts of the UK. But with its complex international connections, we have a long tradition of comparing across countries, across time and between different systems of governance and economics. 

With faculty and students from many countries, comparison is a feature of the engagement inside the classroom and beyond.

Policy makers often argue for what 'works' elsewhere. This programme teaches you to test those claims critically and examine when comparison is meaningful (and when not), how to construct one that holds, and what how we can genuinely can learn from each other. 

Some of the questions we might discuss:

* What has the better long-term labour market outcomes: losing a job in Copenhagen and having time to re-orient or losing a job in London and being pushed to find work as fast as possible?

* How can one country offer free university tuition and another require private fees, but both have similar levels of education immobility?

* What forces shape some countries decisions to sustain huge levels of public debt and keep growing while others harshly cut spending to service debt payments?

Our aims

We have designed our MSc Comparative Public Policy to create a programme that is theory-led, empirically informed and practice-oriented.

We want you to:

* think critically, cleverly and creatively about comparative public policy

* understand the economic, political and social factors that lead international organisations, countries, regions and cities across the world to develop responses to public policy issues

* identify the factors that shape similarities and differences in public policy issues responses across time and space through enriching analytical and practical exercises

* gain the theoretical tools to understand why particular sets of policies are implemented in particular countries

* be able to rigorously assess what works best, and what some countries or regions can - or cannot - learn from others

* leave Edinburgh ready to work in the world of policy, and devise thorough analyses for stakeholders in the public and private sector

* leverage the comparative perspective as a unique strength to tackle policy problems in today's highly integrated societies