PP6702 provides the foundations for the policy process and public administration for doctoral research in public policy. It examines how issues come to be defined as public problems, how policy alternatives are formulated and selected, how administrative actors interpret and implement policy, and why compliance, performance, and policy feedback vary across organisational and institutional settings. Policy process and administrative theories are treated as tools for empirical inquiry, used to identify mechanisms, specify levels of analysis, clarify scope conditions, and generate observable implications. The course recognises that students enter with varied academic preparation. It develops core concepts from first principles and advances through them at the rigour and pace expected of doctoral study. Topics include major policy process frameworks; agenda setting and problem definition; policy formulation, design, and decision-making; bureaucracy, public organisations, and administrative behaviour; implementation, compliance, and street-level discretion; administrative burden and capacity; public management, accountability, public values, and social equity; collaborative and multi-level governance; and evaluation, learning, and policy feedback.

PP6704 provides doctoral students in public policy with rigorous training in core economic theory for policy analysis. It emphasises economic reasoning as a means of diagnosing policy problems, clarifying trade-offs, and designing interventions rather than as an exercise in mathematical formalism or econometric technique. The course assumes varied prior preparation and begins from first principles, while proceeding at a doctoral pace. It is organised in two parts: the first develops macroeconomic frameworks relevant to public policy, including aggregate output, growth, stabilisation, and fiscal-monetary interactions; the second develops microeconomic foundations, including incentives, welfare, market failure, strategic behaviour, and policy design.

PP6706 provides the quantitative foundation for doctoral research in public policy. It establishes a common vocabulary for empirical inference and trains students to evaluate and design research grounded in credible identification strategies. The course assumes varied preparation and is designed to bring students to a common standard while extending the skills of those with stronger prior training. It covers the logic of causal inference, statistical analysis, survey data, regression, and core experimental and quasi-experimental designs, including randomised controlled trials, difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, and regression discontinuity. The emphasis falls on design logic, assumptions, implementation, and the production and evaluation of professional-quality empirical evidence.

PP6707 builds on Research Methods for Public Policy I by broadening students’ methodological repertoire and strengthening their judgment across quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research. It introduces a wider range of methods used in contemporary public policy research, including geospatial analysis, multilevel modelling, machine learning, text analysis, qualitative interviewing, thematic coding, and mixed-methods and participatory approaches. The course emphasises the selection and combination of methods suited to the research question, the strengths and limitations of different forms of evidence, and the responsible use of analytical tools, including AI-assisted methods. The aim is not narrow technical specialisation, though rather methodological range and sound research design.

PP6709 provides the political-economy foundations for doctoral research in public policy. The course asks why policies emerge, why they take particular institutional and distributional forms, and why implementation, enforcement, and accountability vary across contexts. Theory is treated as an instrument of empirical inquiry, used to clarify assumptions, identify causal mechanisms, specify scope conditions, and generate testable hypotheses. The course assumes varied preparation: students with stronger prior training are expected to engage directly with questions of research design and identification, while those with less background are expected to master the core analytical frameworks. Topics include institutions and economic development; state capacity and state building; regime types and political transitions; electoral competition and accountability; legislative politics and coalition formation; collective action and organised interests; bureaucracy and delegation; federalism and decentralisation; redistribution, inequality, and regulation; and international political economy.

PP6770 supports the conceptualisation, design, and development of students’ PhD dissertations. As a second-year core course, it helps students translate prior training in theory and methods into a defensible and executable dissertation agenda. The course focuses on professional and research-development skills not usually covered in core theory or methods courses, including contribution and positioning, feasibility and data access, measurement validity, research workflow, academic writing, oral presentation, peer review, publication strategy, and professional development. Students are expected to present their work, receive and provide rigorous written and oral feedback, participate in School seminars and workshops, and revise their research accordingly. The course also helps students develop a coherent intellectual narrative across the dissertation as a whole, whether in three-paper or chapter-based form.