Another course that looks interesting

MIT – Spring12
 
11.S946 (S12) Institutional Design and Inclusive Urban Governance
 
Peter P. Houtzager
 
DUSP Time: Tue & Thu 2:30-4:00pm Location: Building 9, Rm 9-450B
 
The course examines a range of specialized governance institutions that aim to bring government agencies and civil society associations, service providers, and other actors together to negotiate public policy, strengthen accountability, or co-manage public programs. It will, among other things, explore how informal social relations permeate formal organizations of the state and civil society, and when these relations enhance governance and are developmentally positive (rather than undermine or corrode). Using a comparative approach that draws on insights from historical institutionalism, organizational sociology, and social network analysis, the course discusses different institutional designs and explores how political support for these specialized institutions is constructed among strategic stakeholders and is sustained over time. It asks students to explore how the performance of institutions such as city budgeting, transportation planning, right to information, oversight of conditional cash transfers and others, may be influenced by the broader institutional architecture of urban (and national) governance, and by local ecologies of actors such as professional associations, advocacy NGOs, associations representing urban poor, clientelist political groupings and others. Students are expected to develop ways to counter elite capture, political clientelism, or drift towards exclusion.
 
Peter P. Houtzager’s current research explores how varied social networks permeate political institutions and government agencies in the cities of Delhi and São Paulo, and shape the public services available to the urban poor. He designs professional training courses and is developing a 22-day mixed-methods research course for mid-career African faculty and researchers. Houtzager has a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.