Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POL2120: Democratic Innovations, Deliberation and Public Policy

This module descriptor refers to the 2023/4 academic year.

Whilst the precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover all or some of the following topics:

Theoretical Foundations and Roots of Deliberative Democracy and Democratic innovations
Varieties of democratic innovation, online and offline, at different levels: local, national, global
Democratic innovations in a wider context of political disaffection/ anti-politics
Can deliberation help to reduce polarisation and improve political discourse?
Case Studies and examples from around the world
Coupling Deliberation with Representative and Direct Democracy
Exploring deliberative ideals. How to we assess deliberative ‘quality’?
Inclusivity and equality issues: who speaks during deliberations? Who takes part?
Critical perspectives: exploring the legitimacy of democratic innovations
The impact of democratic innovations: policy impact, impact on participants

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities	Guided independent study	Placement / study abroad
22	128	0

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

Category	Hours of study time	Description
Scheduled Learning & Teaching activities	22	11 x 2 hours. A combination of lecture and seminar discussion; depending on public health regulations these will be delivered online or offline
Guided Independent Study	53	Weekly seminar readings & seminar preparation. This includes reading and note taking, preparing short answers to seminar questions, viewing online deliberations and listening to podcasts, reading presentation slides in advance
Guided Independent Study	50	Self-directed learning for essay. Reading, research, applying knowledge, database searching, writing, re-drafting and editing
Guided Independent Study	20	Self-directed learning for blog. Independently researching a particular case from web sources and readings, applying knowledge to critically appraise it
Guided Independent Study	5	Participation in online forum discussions/ deliberation. ELE forum or similar discussion topics generated by students for class to debate online (asynchronous discussion forum)

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).