DPDPP22 - LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY DECISION MAKING

courses
ID:
DPDPP22
Duration (hours):
48
CFU:
6
SSD:
DIRITTO AMMINISTRATIVO
Located in:
PESCARA
Url:
ECONOMICS AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES/CORSO GENERICO Year: 2
Year:
2025
Course Catalogue:
https://unich.coursecatalogue.cineca.it/af/2025?co...

Overview

Date/time interval

Secondo Quadrimestre (08/01/2026 - 23/02/2026)

Syllabus

Course Objectives


The widest goal of the course is to feed appropriate knowledge about principles and practice common to European legal orders on Administrative law and Public Policy Decision Making. The course contribute to achieve the educational goals of the degree in Economics and Behavioural Sciences by providing the knowledge and skills of legal studies applied to such functions as: analysing and assessing governmental and international working group reports; stressing the behavioural aspects of an array of public policies; support policy-maker in deciding and implementing policies; assessing the impact of different policies and measures. The course, in particular, aims at providing students with critical basic knowledge on how the law operates within the decision-making context of governmental policy and choice. Law, then, is not treated only as a source of legal power, to which from a legal point of view a decision should be however traced back, but as resource among others in a complex decisional environment. After attending the course students will learn how to assess legal resources, legal reasoning and basic technicalities about decision-making processes in the broader context of political sciences and behavioural economics. Besides, they will be able to critically assess how a policy or administrative decision takes place by detecting their main legal and non-legal characters, players and tools.

Course Prerequisites


A basic knowledge of fundamental notions about public law and EU law is recommended. This in normally the case for students who have a degree in economics and alike, political sciences, etc. A useful reading, anyway, is Routledge Handbook of Constitutional Law, Edited by: Mark Tushnet , Thomas Fleiner , Cheryl Saunders, Routdlege, 2012, the first 12 chapters

Teaching Methods


The teaching is articulated in 32 hours of lectures and 16 hours of tutorials based on readings and Q&C sessions on appropriately selected cases. The e-learning platform (Moodle) will be used both for supplementing teaching material and tracking student progress.

Assessment Methods


The exam is oral with the possibility of written preliminary test on the Moodle platform.

Texts


Bruno Dente, Le decisioni di policy, Il Mulino, 2011. S. Civitarese Matteucci, Discretion and Decision: Understanding Public Power through Reasonableness and Proportionality, Forthcoming (students will have a draft copy if not published yet)

Contents


The course deals with the general theory of decision-making regarding public policy and choice with a view on the so-called behavioural policymaking as well. In this context the law comes to the fore both in its mainly procedural and organisational fashion, typically embodied in the administrative law tradition, and in its function of laying down goals and objectives to pursue, when discretionary power is involved. The first part of the course is devoted to this decisional practice and the principles that characterise it. To understand public policy decision-making the structure and outcomes of public policy will be studied by analysing the main decisional models: rational, rationally limited, and incremental. With the aim of understanding to what extent the legal point of view is relevant and useful within a decisional environment, we will study who are the players, which are their objectives, and what are their political, economic, knowledge-based, and legal means. Finally, we will focus on how a decision is made by analysing in more detail formal procedural rules and ways of interaction between the players involved.

Course Language


Italian

More information


E-mail: Stefano.civitarese@unich.it Office hours: Wednesday 16:00-17:00

Degrees

Degrees

ECONOMICS AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES 
Master’s Degree
2 years
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