Calendar

WEEK # TOPICS KEY DATES
1 Introduction, Student Research Interests, and Cross-cutting Methodological Issues First class participation instruction
2A Turning Assumptions into Research Questions Second class participation instruction
2B Turning Assumptions into Research Questions: Case Examples

Guest:

Session with Prof. Merilee Grindle, Professor of International Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Third class participation instruction

Short paper due
3 Folding "Politics" and "Clientelism" into Planning Research - Comparative Cases
4A Bureaucracies and Other Organizations: Street-level Bureaucrats, Front-line Workers
4B Bureaucracies and Other Organizations: Mixing the Politics and the Management of Cities

Guest:

Session with Prof. J. Phillip Thompson, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT
4C Bureaucracies and Other Organizations: Variables Driving Organizational Behavior - From Within and Without

Guest:

Session with Prof. Michael Piore, Economics / Political Science, MIT
5 Past First-year-paper Examples - Sessions with Authors
6 Country and Subnational Comparisons - Lessons for Research

Guests:

Sessions with Prof. Richard Locke, Political Science, MIT, and Professor Richard Snyder, Political Science, Brown University
7 Uncertainty, Bounded Rationality, and "Satisficing"

Session on MIT authorization for research involving interviewing, with the Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects.
Short paper due
8 Interpreting Duplication, Overlap, and Lack of Inter-agency Coordination Draft of final paper due
9 Interviewing: First and Follow-up Questions, etc. Paper review assignment due
10 Discussions of Draft First-year Paper Proposals
11 Last Class Final paper due