The course introduces key societal challenges and illustrates the specific approach applied in SEEP. It introduces truth, power and transformation as concepts with different meanings in different paradigms and policy settings. It also introduces three contemporary global policy challenges in more detail.

After completion of this course, students will:
- be aware of key global policy challenges and their interactions;
- understand the importance of framing problems for policy making, including ethical and political issues and the importance of discourses and paradigms;
- understand different meanings of transformation, power and truth as key concepts of SEEP and
- have a pluralist understanding of economics

This being a ‘Course with continuous Assessment (PI)’, the university requires students to attend at least 80% of all classes for completing the course successfully. This means that you can miss a maximum of  2 sessions, missing a third sessions means you will fail the course. Ideally you don’t miss any sessions.

First Deliverable (in groups; 15 points, max. 1000 words, deadline: October 16, 2019, 23.59 pm):
Look at the “Human Development Report 2014 Sustaining Human Progress - UNDP” (Chapter 4) and the “World Development Report 2014: Risk and Opportunity. Managing Risk for Development” (Chapter 4 and 5).
The task of this deliverable consists in critically comparing and contrasting the two reports with respect to the following questions:
* How are “resilience” and “vulnerability” conceptualized?
* What are the respective actors of transformation?
* How is the agenda set and what are “non-issues”?
* Which report offers the true analysis?

Plagiarism Test (individually; 5 points, max. 1000 words, deadline: October 31st, 2019)

Second Deliverable (individually, 20 points, max. 1000 words)
Choose one policy challenge related to your first thematic block, which you consider as a burning issue for socio-ecological development. Discuss the challenge and relate it to key concepts presented in the CGPC course.

Third Deliverable (individually, 20 points, max. 1000 words)
Choose one policy challenge related to your second thematic block, which you consider as a burning issue for socio-ecological development. Discuss the challenge and relate it to key concepts presented in the CGPC course.

Fourth Deliverable (individually, 20 points, max. 1000 words)
Choose one policy challenge related to your third thematic block, which you consider as a burning issue for socio-ecological development. Discuss the challenge and relate it to key concepts presented in the CGPC course.

Fifth Deliverable (individually; 20 points, max. 1000 words, deadline: February 10, 2020)
Write an essay for a newspaper where you outline a SEEP-Approach to one selected contemporary global policy challenge that has been discussed in a thematic bloc. Make sure that your writing is accessible to a lay audience. As a first reference you can use the introduction of the 11th Edition of the Style Guide of the Economist.

Marking scheme: Excellent (91 – 100); Good (79 – 90); Satisfactory (60 –78); Sufficient (51 – 59); Insufficient (from 50)

These are strict deadlines! Submissions within 24 hours after the deadline will be accepted with a mark-down of 25% of points. Thereafter we will not accept any submissions. No exceptions.

All submissions via assignment section at Learn@WU.

andreas.novy@wu.ac.at; Multi-Level Governance and Development; D4 2nd floor

Roughly we expect you to spend time as follows in this course

8 ECTS = 200 hours of work (60 minutes each)

The elements of this course were designed with the following timings in mind.

Class attendance (14 classes): 42 hours

Weekly reading incl. journal writing (14 sessions, 2.5 hours each): 35 hours

First Deliverable (15% of your grade): 21 hours

Second Deliverable (20% of your grade): 26 hours

Third Deliverable (20% of your grade): 26 hours

Fourth Deliverable (20% of your grade): 26 hours

Fifth Deliverable (20% of your grade): 21 hours

Plagiarism  (5 % of your grade): 3 hours

Total: 200 hours

Obviously, these timings are mere suggestions and may vary considerably between individuals (e.g. due to differences in prior knowledge).