Department of Political Science and Public Administration

The course focuses on the analysis of the interplay between actors, institutions and ideas, as key components of governance, with emphasis on the role of institutions in shaping actors’ preferences, thus facilitating collective action among actors and the achievement of public policy outcomes, namely public goods. Of particular importance is the role of institutions in the creation of institutional and social trust, which is the crucial prerequisite for achieving collective action. In that respect, the symptoms / pathologies of institutional malfunctioning or weakness are discussed as well. In this framework, quality of government is raised as a crucial conceptual tool for identifying variation across time and space and facilitating comparative analysis at large. The theoretical framework of the course draws on new institutionalist approaches (rational choice, historical, sociological) to governance performance, while the empirical part concentrates on the comparative analysis of systems of governance across regions of Europe (North, South, South-East, Central-East).