International Policy and Development Specialization

The International Policy and Development (IPD) Specialization focuses on two broad kinds of questions:

1. How to achieve economic and political development? These courses focus on why some people and societies are poor, unequal, unstable, or unfree, and what circumstances and policies promote wealth, equality, stability, and freedoms.

2. How to design and implement public policy globally? The courses focus on public policy issues in an international setting across a range of subjects, including: education, health, children, criminal justice, public finance, labor markets, elections, and so forth.

The IPD specialization is designed to prepare students for careers in government, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, or multinational corporations.

Students who complete this specialization will be able to:

• Assess key arguments advanced historically and currently in the arena of development
  
• Understand whether and why an intervention is successful or not, whether an intervention is scalable and how to meaningfully measure outcomes
  
• Seek data-driven solutions to development issues across multiple sectors, including economy, education, governance, energy, security, gender, health, and the environment

The specialization’s curated list of electives is designed to allow students to explore multiple academic approaches to understanding development, including from economics, political science, statistics, and psychology. 

Harris specializations function as areas of specialization within the degree. Specializations assume knowledge of the 6-course Harris Core and build upon that foundation with coursework in specific policy areas or technical skills.

Application Process

The specialization is open to Harris Public Policy graduate students only. Please indicate your intent to pursue this specialization using the Harris Specialization Declaration Form.

For specialization registration questions, please reach out to harrisregistration@uchicago.edu.

Planning for the Specialization

For information on which quarter(s) each course will be offered see the Harris Courses page and filter by specialization. 

Specialization Requirements

The specialization requires completion of three specialization courses. Students must achieve at least a B- grade in each course. No specialization course may be taken on a pass/fail grading basis. The courses do not need to be taken in a particular order.

Required course

Students must complete the following course to fulfill the requirement:

• PPHA 35550 Economic Development and Policy

Elective courses

The specialization will be awarded to students who complete any two of the qualifying electives; however, the following courses are recommended as fundamental to the specialization:

• PPHA 32740 Order and Violence
• PPHA 35556 Power and Development
• PPHA 35588 China and the World

The following courses also fulfill the requirement for the International Development and Policy specialization:

• PPHA 32750 Hydropolitics: Water Policy and Conflict  
• PPHA 33510 Nuclear Policy
• PPHA 33840 Managing Chaos: Competing Strategies in a Disordered World
• PPHA 35240 Economics of Education and Development
• PPHA 35560 Behavioral Policy and Program Design: Translating Evidence for Impact
• PPHA 35570 Conflict and Humanitarian Intervention: Blurring Humanitarian  Development  and Security Policy  
• PPHA 35585 The Chinese Economy
• PPHA 37040 Economic Growth and Development
• PPHA 38740 Conflict and Applied Data Science
• PPHA 39930 International Climate Policy
• PPHA 44302 Labor Markets: A Global Perspective
• PPHA 47400 Women and Public Policy From an Evolutionary Perspective
• PPHA 60000 Policy Lab (International Development sections only)
• AASR 35530 / PPHA 35530 Introduction to Critical Development Studies
• LAWS 53507 Law and Economic Development
• PBPL 20115/PPHA 47420 Women, Peace, and Security
• Not offered in 26-27
  • PPHA 35540 How to Change the World: Science of Policymaking in International Policy and Development
  • PPHA 35577 Big Data and Development
  • PPHA 39790 The Fundamental Disequilibrium in Latin America

Specialization Contacts

Rebecca Wolfe, Faculty Administrative Director

Christopher Blattman, Specialization Director

Faculty Spotlight

The pandemic changed a lot of teaching for the worse, but I wanted to tweet how it spurred me to try to change the way we teach international policy and development @HarrisPolicy.

In short, we took the opportunity to try to get policymakers all over the world to teach classes. pic.twitter.com/iBb97ixjhY

— Chris Blattman (@cblatts) February 25, 2021