Overview
Choose a public policy where state and/or city governments have policy-making power.
Choose 2 states (or 2 cities) for a comparison case study on that policy.
Examples of potential public policies (a non-exhaustive list): (if you have other ideas please feel free to run them by me)
- Education
- Housing
- Policing
- Healthcare
- Poverty
- Infrastructure
- Public Transit
Substantively, your goal is to
1) identify a public policy issue and explain the status quo of that issue in the two chose states/cities (at the time the new policy was adopted/enacted)
2) describe how two different states (or cities) approach that same issue via public policy (state legislation, local ordinances, budget priorities funding/creating programs, creating/eliminating regulations, etc...)
3) synthesize the evidence that speaks to the extent to which the policy action had any effect on the issue.
4) Generate hypotheses that might explain why or why not the public policy is/is not working in either/both places (note - this is where your paper will end. You are not conducting your own original data gathering and hypothesis testing. You are identifying existing research that helps to explain whether or not a particular public policy was or was not succesful in addressing a particular issue and are synthesizing that research).
Parameters:
8-10 pages, double-spaced.
12pt, Times New Roman
APA, MLA, or Chicago-style citation format for in-text references and works cited/references list/bibliography.
Minimum 10 references/citations; at least 2 of which must come from assigned course material.