Syllabus
Students are required to follow the instructions and requirements specified in the course sylabus available at https://upces.cerge-ei.cz/academic-life/upces-courses-a-z Scroll for the UPCES Course List and click on the particular course for course description and syllabus.
Reading materials: the coordinators of the UPCES programme will inform the enrolled students where to get them.
Annotation
This course aims to provide students with an introduction to social policies dealing with the most common problems of modern societies and welfare state and how they are being formulated in the political process. These challenges include work-life balance, gender inequalities and discrimination, homelessness and poor living conditions and respective social services. For each topic, we first introduce the problem, its scope and relevance.
We illustrate the historical perspective and time evolution and talk about cross-country differences and the possible reasons for these differences. Second, we discuss potential solutions and address specific policies that could be used to tackle this issue. We investigate how the specific context of Central Europe shapes policies used in the area and how that differs from Western countries. Third, we discuss the effectiveness of policies and provide some evidence about what works and why. Finally, selected students provide a short overview of the situation in their home country related to the issue at hand (the scope of the problem, policies used to tackle the issue and the related costs and benefits). At the end, we compare the situation in the Czech Republic to the one presented by students from their home countries and discuss potential implications for policy.