Offered in collaboration between the Program for Social Policy Evaluation and Research (PROSPER) at the College of Public Policy, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) and the University of California, Berkeley.

The program will prepare leaders with an intellectual foundation of analytic skills and knowledge of social policy design, which can be applied in diverse national settings. It is designed to offer a comprehensive overview of the philosophical issues, classic debates, prevailing assumptions, social accounting and recent trends in the social policy developments of modern welfare states.

Two intensive in-class modules—one in Doha and one in Berkeley—include faculty presentations, case discussions, guest speakers, and skill-building exercises, plus two days of field visits to social agencies. 

Topics

• Historical Context of Social Policy 
• The Social and Economic Markets
• Social Welfare Expenditures
• Social Accounting
• Institutional Context of Social Welfare Policy
• Analytic Framework on Social Policy
• Social Policy Delivery Systems
• Mode of Financing
• Classic Social Policy Debates
• Critical Assessment of the Standard Metrics of Social Welfare Policy

On completing this program participants will be able to: 

1. Identify the major trends and issues in the development of modern welfare states dealing with: divergence and convergence, decommodification and recommodification, family policy and defamilialization, passive and active policy, evolution of welfare regimes, privatization, public-private partnerships, demographic influences, and new and emerging risks.
2. Analyze the fundamental choices in the design of social welfare policies, the classic debates surrounding these choices, the social values, theories, and assumptions that inform different answers, and how alternative views of social justice are expressed in these policy choices. 
3. Critically evaluate conventional metrics of social welfare policy such as social expenditures, poverty indices, and measures of inequality and social mobility. 

The program requirement will involve a final project using empirical data to conduct a comparative analysis of social policy trends in welfare states.

Faculty

The program will also utilize a number of guest lecturers who are luminaries in the field of social program.

Program Completion

A joint certificate of completion will be issued by the College of Public Policy and the UC Berkeley Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Cost

Tuition for enrollment in the program is 10, 000 USD per student (bank transfer to CPP account). Participants should be responsible for arranging their own visa, lodging at their own expenses for the session at UC Berkeley.

Registration deadline: February 1, 2022

Doha session: March 2023

Berkeley session: August 1 - 5, 2022

Register now