Teaching
The project's own ten-module training course, and — below it — openly available background material from across the field: syllabi, explainers, lectures and podcasts. Every link is free to use.
If you are meeting this literature for the first time, For students and scholars sets out the vocabulary and an order to read in. Most of what is gathered here is mirrored in the source archive.
Policy Agenda training video modules
Ten modules, free on YouTube, that take you from what the project measures to coding a document yourself against our codebook.
Policy Agenda Training Video Modules. Ten modules from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, running from what the project measures through to coding documents yourself: the structure of the codebook, practice questions, worked examples, the special cases, and why the original source matters.
Module 1Introduction to the Policy Agenda Project
Module 2Using Policy Agenda data
Module 3The structure of the codebook
Module 4Testing your coding skills with practice questions
Module 5Practical exercises in document coding
Module 6Strategies for answering policy classification questions
Module 7Practical examples and practice questions for policy coding
Module 8Special cases, including Native American affairs and water resources
Module 9Practical examples of classification in government documents
Module 10The importance of original data sources in policy analysis
Openly available teaching material from elsewhere in the field — syllabi, explainers, lectures and podcasts. Useful context, but none of it teaches the project's codebook.
Open syllabi & course sites
Courses on policy agendas and the policy process — several taught by members of the project itself.
Graduate Seminar on Agenda-Setting (Frank Baumgartner, founding director of the US project) — the full course site: syllabus, supplemental readings, and fourteen weeks of assigned reading.
Open course site ↗archived copyBaumgartner's complete open teaching archive — agenda-setting seminars, POLI 421 Framing Public Policies, the graduate framing seminar, and the Penn State agenda-setting courses, each with full reading lists.
Open course site ↗archived copyThe Politics of U.S. Public Policy (Sarah Pralle) — a full syllabus on how politics shapes what reaches the policy agenda, and how programs and instruments get chosen.
Open course site ↗archived copyIntroduction to Public Policy (E.J. Fagan, associate director of the US project) — syllabus for a survey built around the policy process and agenda setting.
Open course site ↗archived copyUnderstanding Public Policy (Paul Cairney) — the open course hub: bounded rationality, punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, and the advocacy coalition framework, week by week.
Open course site ↗archived copyCairney's open primer series — short, teachable explainers on every major policy-process concept, punctuated equilibrium and agenda setting included.
Open course site ↗archived copyPolicy concepts in 1000 words
Paul Cairney's open primer series (University of Stirling) — 42 short explainers covering the whole policy-process canon, punctuated equilibrium and agenda setting included. The fastest route into the theory behind this project's data.
Foundations
Core theories
Ideas, framing, power
Evidence & psychology
Teaching & tools
All 42 entries are written and hosted by Paul Cairney, Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Stirling. Every title above links to his original, which is the authoritative version and the one to cite; the small archive link beside it opens a local copy we keep purely as link-rot insurance. Start at the series index ↗.
Lectures elsewhere
Free lectures on the policy process from outside the project.
Policy, Politics and Research — Prof. Paul Cairney. Why policymakers don't listen to evidence, and how attention shapes what gets through.
Watch on YouTube ↗Practical Lessons from Policy Theory. Chris Weible and Paul Cairney on what policy-process theory — punctuated equilibrium included — teaches practitioners.
Watch on YouTube ↗Introduction to the Public Policy Process. The five-minute starter: agenda setting's place in the policy cycle.
Watch on YouTube ↗And to listen
The Policy Agenda podcast — E.J. Fagan and Brooke Shannon of the US project interview political scientists working on the policy process. Listen ↗ · Episode list ↗