Charlotte Halpern (Sciences Po Paris - Centre for European studies and comparative politics (CEE))

Dr. Charlotte Halpern holds a PhD in political science and is FNSP Associate Research Professor (full tenure) at Sciences Po, Centre for European studies and comparative politics (CEE), CNRS, France. She has done extensive teaching and research on state restructuring, comparative urban governance and the selection of policy instruments. Her current research focuses on the politics and policies of ecological transitions in a multi-level governance context. She has co-edited several books (e.g., Policy analysis in France, Policy press, 2018 with P. Hassenteufel and P.Zittoun; Public policy instrumentation : Theoretical debates and controversies, Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2026, with P. Le Galès and P. Hassenteufel), special issues and articles in academic journals (Comparative European Politics; West European Politics; Politique européenne; Espacestemps.net) and chapters in peer-reviewed books. She is the co-director of the LIEPP’s environmental policy research group. She is an elected member of IPPA’s executive committee.

Course: Policy Coordination and the Governance of Cross-Cutting Public Policy Challenges

Policy coordination has drawn much attention by policy research as well as by practitioners in recent years. By contrast to concepts and theories examining public policy developments in well-defined domains of state intervention, policy coordination research tries to make sense of the conceptual and the practical challenges posed by policymaking across policy sectors, levels of government and beyond the public sector. In a classic perspective, it contributes to the understanding of the changes resulting from the blurring of policy frontiers and to the emergence of transversal public policy issues. It also provides useful insights to addressing contemporary public policy issues, which very often cut across organizational boundaries and are characterized by complexity, high uncertainty and controversies about problems definitions as well as selecting a course for action. Drawing on the public policy literature, as well as on specific case studies, this course will discuss the development of thinking about policy coordination, its various components in terms of problems, institutional arrangements, and evaluation. The course also aims at providing students with methodological insights for the study of policy coordination, including the governing of transversal issues (gender, digitization, climate change, etc.).