This course is about making sense of how public policy is made. Public policy is the collection of decisions and instruments used by governments to respond to the diverse and complex mix of social, environmental, economic and cultural problems, issues and circumstances which confront and challenge communities, regions and nations. There are a number of models which attempt to explain how policy making happens which typically adopt sausage factory production or cyclic modes of analysis, reducing policy making to a rational, objective process of steps and stages. Deborah Stone, and others, suggest we use other forms of analysis to understand the paradox and ambiguity of policy making. This course takes Stone's advice and so is designed develop your policy analysis capacity so that you can engage with the complexity and challenges of developing political responses to a diverse range of often enduring and difficult problems and issues. The course is designed for postgraduate students wanting to develop understanding and familiarity with the ideas, processes and politics of policy making. Within this framework, it is the task of the course to support your development as critically aware policy actors.