Satyajit Singh (University of California)

Satyajit Singh is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Department of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include the power and politics of policy formulation, policy design, and implementation. He has worked on policy design and implementation on the ground with environmental movements in India and the Asia-Pacific region during his stints at The World Bank and work with the UNDP and other international development institutions.

Course: Macro Policy Design and Micro-level Interpretation and Implementation

This is a course on macro policy design and micro-level interpretation and implementation.  It brings into focus micro-politics that policy designers use to shape policies, how the interests of the last mile of bureaucrats and political representatives shape policy interpretation, and how considerations of social capital and local democratic engagements impact outcomes. Students working on decentralization, social welfare, and climate resilience, especially in developing countries, are encouraged to apply.

This course focuses on the unequal power dynamics in developing societies, uneven state capacities, and varying degrees of social capital that shape policy outcomes in a non-Eurocentric context. It will be seen how specific cultural and democratic contexts shape policy designs. The course would encourage young scholars to reflect on their field experiences, relate them to theoretical literature, and help them critically construct a useful pedagogy for their work. Given that the dominant literature in developing countries focuses on policy outcomes and impacts across social groups related to concerns around gender, indigeneity, and other categories such as caste and color, the intersectionality of policies, as shaped by culture, politics, and institutions, will be in focus.

The most pressing policy concern of our time is climate change, and this course would help develop options for a socially sensitive green governance structure that supports sustainable policy design and implementation, as well as collective action. It will examine procedural processes that support the formation of greener policies, institutional designs that strengthen horizontal and vertical governance linkages, and direct democratic engagements that strengthen state capacity and facilitate coordinated implementation for sustainable development. The course will be conducted in a participatory workshop format that encourages peer learning and a democratic exchange of ideas.