Nils C. Bandelow (Technische Universität Braunschweig)

Nils C. Bandelow is Professor of Political Science and Head of the Institute of Comparative Politics and Public Policy (CoPPP) at Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. His research focuses on policy processes, policy change, and actor centered explanations of policymaking, with substantive work particularly in health and infrastructure policy. He is co-editor of the Review of Policy Research (RPR) and European Policy Analysis (EPA).

Johanna Hornung (University of Lausanne)

Johanna Hornung is Assistant Professor in Public Policy at the Institute of Political Studies, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research focuses on public policy, especially in (public) health policy and crises, as well as the integration of psychological perspectives into policy research. She is co-editor of the Review of Policy Research (RPR) and European Policy Analysis (EPA).

Course: Actors, Groups, and Interactions in Policy Processes

Actor centered approaches to public policy rely on different assumptions about policy actors, the origins of preferences, the formation of collective actors, and the conditions under which actors interact. Some approaches treat preferences largely as given and focus on strategic action within institutional constraints. Others explain political orientations through belief systems, policy programs, professional biographies, social relations, or social identities. These differences are linked to different scientific perspectives and support different forms of empirical explanation, interpretation, and normative evaluation. The course examines these differences systematically by asking which assumptions theories make about actors, where preferences come from, how individual actors become collective actors, and how institutions and interactions shape policy stability and change. Applications from different political systems and policy fields are used to discuss scope conditions, normative assumptions, and the strengths and limits of alternative perspectives. The final part links theory to empirical research. Participants compare how existing studies conceptualize and study actors, groups, and interactions, and discuss which data and methods are appropriate for different theoretical claims. The course is designed to help participants classify studies they encounter and make an explicit and informed choice of perspective for their own research.