PIA 2530 / GE2267 Exploring Public Affairs in Globalized Cities

Lecturer: Derrick Ho
Venue: LI-1507
Time: Tue 1200-1450
Email: hungcho2@cityu.edu.hk
Office: LI-5541

Course objective
This course aims 1) to understand how public policy develop and function and 2) identify approaches and theories in
explaining processes and problems of public affairs and global governance.

Schedule
Week Date Topic Deadline
W01 Introduction to public affairs and global governance
5/9

W02 12/9 Actors in global governance

W03 Overview of public affairs and public policy in Hong Kong Team list (Deadline: Sept 19, 2023)
19/9 (Guest Speaker: Mr. Matthew Cheung 張建宗 - 7th Chief
Secretary for Administration)
W04 Health in all policies (HiAP) in a global urban context
26/9 (Guest Speaker: Dr. Kwok-Cho Tang, Former Coordinator of
Health Promotion, World Health Organization)
W05 Policial economy and environmental security in a global Ethical Review (Deadline: Oct 3,
3/10
context 2023)
W06 10/10 Environmental and ecological justice
W07 17/10 Cities, migration and globalization
W08 Reading break for mid-term test. NO lecture Topic and proposed plan for team
24/10
project (Deadline: Oct 24, 2023)
W09 31/10 Mid-term test
W10 Tutorial Discussion: Topic 1 Summary of tutorial discussion
7/11
(Deadline: Nov 10, 2023)
Tutorial Discussion: Topic 2 Summary of tutorial discussion
W11 14/11
(Deadline: Nov 17, 2023)
W12 Presentation- team project initial findings Presentation – team project’s PPT
21/11
(Deadline: Nov 20, 2023)
W13 28/11 Presentation- team project initial findings
Final report – term project
(Deadline: Dec 5, 2023)
Individual term paper (Deadline:
Dec 12, 2023)

Assessment
1. Discussion and participation 10%
- Participate in tutorial discussion and submit a summary for each tutorial discussion (5% each)
2. Presentation of team project 5%
- Group presentation for the final project
3. Team project report 40%
- Topic and proposed plan (1000 words) = 10%
- Final report group online blog (2000 words) = 30%
4. Individual Term paper 20% One Individual Term Paper (1500 words)
5. Test 25% 1.5 hours mid-term test
Team Project

• The team project is an implementation of the DEC (Discovery Enriched Curriculum).

• This is a team project (of 6 students) on a policy issue / problem
• The project should collect information / data both first hand and via the internet // library.
• The team project report is in the form of an online multi-media blog which includes text, photo and video.
• Students should form a team of SIX students and prioritise the project topics (see below).

Learning Objectives (and also the assessment criteria):

• Identify approaches and theories in exploring policy issues.
• Discover the contradictions and critically review
• in public policy.
• Generate new perspectives in looking at social problems and policy issues
• Implementing skills in team work, on video-making, blog-writing and critical writing in policy analysis
• Carrying out literature and field work research.
• Communicating the message to viewers effectively.

Form your team and choose a project topic

• You should form a team of SIX from students

• The deadline of submitting your team list will be on Sept 19, 2023.
• Finalized team list will be released on Sept 22, 2023.
• You would randomly be assigned to a team if you cannot form a team of six into a team.
• You need to prepare for the presentations of your initial findings in week 12 or 13.
• Upload your presentation powerpoint file to canvas at 12:00pm on Nov 20, 2023.

Ethical Review (Deadline: Oct 3, 2023)

• The academic community is very concern about how data are collected.
• As your research process would inevitably involve human subjects. The University concerns on the right of people
who are willing to participate in the research so that their privacy being respected.
• It requires all student projects of this kind to submit an application for ethnic review. Consult the Procedures for
Ethical Review of Human Research (Student Applications) for the instructions.
Download the application form and other associated forms (Consent form checklist
Agreement of Use of Photography; Audio/Video Recording; Confidentiality Pledge
• All data collection involving human subjects cannot start without formal approval from the ethical review
committee.
• Submit your application not later than Oct 3, 2023 to canvas.

Topic and Proposed Plan (Deadline: Oct 24, 2023)

• All teams should start preparing their projects once the topics are fixed.
• Consult the course leader if you need help.
• Your proposed plan should include initial ideas of your focus, research questions, sites for data collection etc.
• Basic ingredients of your project:
o A focused question or a couple of questions
o Concepts / theories that you will be using in your project
o Project site(s) you will visit and/or people you will interview to collect data
• You need to ask specific and focused question(s).
• The project needs to connect to concepts / theories – refer to the readings in relevant lectures or consult the
course leader on the references.

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 • The project needs to connect to “sites” (locations) and / or “subjects” (people) that enable you to collect first-
hand data (e.g. interviews and observation). You can add “secondary” data to your project: from books,
newspapers, journals, websites, reports etc.
• The project acts as a tool to allow you to pose a question(s) on issues of public affairs using concepts and
theories in public affairs / policy studies, and you answer this/these question(s) through your interpretation of
the empirical data which you collected.

Team project presentation (Deadline for PPT submission: Nov 20, 2023)

• Each project team will take turn in week 12 and 13 to present their initial findings and analysis of their team
project.
• The presentation may not be the final output but a report on the major progress. There will still be room for
further enhancement. NO assessment will be made on the substance of the project (but assessment will be
made on your preparation and presentation process, e.g. presentation skills, division of labour in the
presentation etc).
• Each team will have 10 minutes for a short presentation followed by about 5 minutes of Q&A. Order of
presentation will be decided by the lecturer randomly.
• The presenting team has to host the Q&A session and the whole team should participate actively in the
discussion during the Q&A session – the performance of hosting discussion and answering questions will be
counted towards the participation marks.
• The tutor will sum up the presentation and advice the teams on further enhancement.
• Preparation and presentation tasks should be equally distributed among team members.

Team project report (Deadline: Dec 5, 2023)

Present the team project report in the form of an online blog which contains
• Text (around 2000 words)
• Photos (around 10-15 photos)
• Video clips (2-3 clips each about 1-3 minutes) with your verbal narration in English
• All conversation (including the verbal narration) in the video (regardless the language) should have the
associated subtitle in English.
• The blog must contain materials your team produced first hand (e.g. video, photo, sound recording your team
made). Other visual and text material from the internet or printed media can also be added but they need to be
properly acknowledged and referenced.

You are encouraged to use a third party platform like Wordpress, wix.com, etc to create
your blog and submit the link to canvas. It is advisable that you set your blog private..
Please make sure ALL course lecturers have the access rights to the blog. The password for
access must be included in the submission to canvas (as some assignments may need
second marking).

Make sure the names and student number of ALL team members as well as the team
number and your topic appear in the OPENING page of your blog.

Suggested structure of the online blog:

• The questions – state the questions you are addressing
• Background – what is the issue; How the issues are understood and what are the problems with such
understanding; Why the questions are significant and how you do the research; state the question(s) you would
address.
• Concept / theory – A short elaboration of the concepts and theories you use in analysing the cases questions.
You should NOT only define your concepts, but also present theories on the relationships between these
concepts. Dictionary definition and contents from Wikipedia are NOT acceptable. You need to consult proper
academic literature (like the ones we introduce in lectures). Yet, you need to properly acknowledged where
your theories, concepts and ideas come from.
• The Empirical cases – sites and / or people
o A short description of the sites / people and what you have done to collect data

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 o Describe the secondary data sources as well
o Describe what you have collected
• Analysis – how you interpret the data you have collected (in the light of the theories).
• Concluding remarks and policy implications – how you draw conclusions from the data you collected to address
the questions.
• References – full details of references you have cited (not what you have read)
• ** Important – the most essential elements are the questions you address and the “arguments” that lead to your
conclusions in relation to the theory (your arguments need to be convincing and based on facts or evidence). At
the same time the presentation of materials has to be clear and interesting.

Individual Term Paper (Deadline: Dec 12, 2023)

• Each student has to submit an individual term paper in MS word formats

• This term paper is to review, summarize and comment two articles (~750 words for each article, which
means ~1500 words in total).
• The details of the individual term paper will be released in week 10.
• Deadline: Dec 12, 2023 at 23:59
• Submission via canvas

Face to face classes

• All lectures will be conducted face to face on campus.
• [Important] The lecture notes and the presentations of the lectures are intellectual properties of the concerned
lecturers. Further reproduction or distribution of the lecture notes, recording of the lectures on zoom (and
further distribution of such recordings) without explicit permission from the concerned lecturer is an
infringement of copy rights.
Academic Honesty
Academic honesty is central to the conduct of academic work. Students are expected to present their own work, give
proper acknowledgement of other’s work, and honestly report findings obtained. Academic dishonesty is regarded as a
serious offence in the University. Any related offence can lead to disciplinary action with a penalty including expulsion
from the University and debarment from re-admission.
Extracted from Rules on Academic Honesty, City University of Hong Kong

IMPORTANT – Checking similarity

To avoid unintended plagiarism, you are required to check your text on similarity before submitting your blog. Submit
the text of your blog to the “Draft” entry in the Canvas assignment. Make sure all text from existing literature is
properly referenced (ask your tutor if you have queries). **All photos and videos that are not taken by your team have
to be properly referenced (who is the author and where did you get them from).
Do the similarity test for your term paper before you submit the final version

General Reading
1. Knoepfel, Peter; Larrue, Corinne, Varone, Frederic, Hill, Michael (2007) Public policy analysis 1st Edition,
Bristol : Policy Press,
2. Mercer, Trish; Ayres, Russell; Head, Brian; Wanna, John (2021) Learning Policy, Doing Policy: Interactions Between
Public Policy Theory, Practice and Teaching, Canberra: ANU Press
3. Rich, Andrew (2004) Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise,Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres
4. Howlett, Michael (2011) Designing Public Policies: Principles and Instruments, London: Routledge
5. Simon , Christopher A..(2010) Public policy : preferences and outcomes, 2nd ed. New York : Longman.

Prepared by: Derrick Ho

Date: Sept 1 2023

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