Admission requirements
Students admitted to the Public Administration Master, regardless of track affiliation. GofS-students enrolment via study coordinator(s).
Description
This Behavioral Public Administration elective looks at key public governance challenges from a micro-level perspective by focusing on how individual behaviors and attitudes shape public decisions, using insights from psychology and behavioral economics. Through a behavioral lens, this course explores the behaviors and attitudes of citizens, bureaucrats, and politicians amidst key governance challenges, such as Artificial Intelligence, sustainability, social equity and discrimination, public service delivery or performance management.
This course delves into key behavioral concepts – including nudges, sludges, cognitive biases, or framing – that explain how decisions are made and can be influenced within the public sector. By exploring public governance challenges through a behavioral lens, this course complements and enriches traditional public governance theories, offering a micro-level understanding of classical approaches in Public Administration.
Whether students are aiming for a career in public policy, consultancy or research, this course provides them with hands-on tools to better understand individuals’ behaviors and attitudes in public decision-making. This course deepens students’ understanding of public governance challenges through an interdisciplinary approach that bridges public governance, behavioral economics and psychology.
Course objectives
After successfully completing this course, students should be able to:
Understand and explain core concepts of Behavioral Public Administration and their relevance to public governance challenges;
Select and apply Behavioral Public Administration insights to analyze pressing public governance challenges, such as those related to Artificial Intelligence, sustainability, social equity and discrimination, public service delivery or performance management;
Generate and communicate concrete policy recommendations informed by behavioral insights to policymakers;
Evaluate and critically review scientific readings on Behavioral Public Administration;
Timetable
On the Public Administration front page of the e-Prospectus you will find links to the website and timetables, uSis and Brightspace.
Mode of instruction
This course consists of interactive lectures that are combined with students’ independent study of the literature.
Total 140 hours of which:
16 contact hours
124 hours of self-study
Assessment method
The assessment method of this course consists of two partial evaluations:
Individual Paper (40 percent)
Group Paper (60 percent)
To pass the course, students need to have a minimum of 5.5 for both components. Partial grades are only valid in the current academic year; partial grades will not remain valid after the exam and the resit of the course.
Reading list
During the course, we will use a selected list of readings that will be communicated prior to the start of the course via Brightspace. Readings should be located through the university library catalogue. Readings that cannot be found online will be provided by the course instructor.
Registration
Please note, registration for block 2 electives will be organised by the OSC in a different way from the regular course registration for semester 1. More information about this will follow in the second half of September.
Leiden University uses Brightspace as its online learning management system. After enrolment for the course in MyStudymap you will be automatically enrolled in the Brightspace environment of this course.
Contact
Dr. A.V. Lerusse a.v.lerusse@fgga.leidenuniv.nl