Germany and COVID vaccines: too cautious?
Many wonder why Germany didn’t weigh the harms of vaccine delay more heavily before limiting use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. What frameworks from moral philosophy are relevant?
Faculty
Faculty, Governance, cooperation and law
Nine recommendations on digital trade policy for the UK government
The UK government has identified digital trade as one of the main sources of growth that will catapult us out of the doldrums of the pandemic. And now that we’ve left the EU, the government also wants the UK to play a leading role in setting the international standards and regulations that govern the global digital economy.
Faculty, Health, welfare and well-being
With a fourth wave looming, many US states are dropping pandemic policy measures
March was a big month for COVID-19 policies in the US. The one-year anniversary of the pandemic was marked by vaccination rollouts, the settling in of new federal leadership, and—in some states—the dramatic loosening of COVID-19 restrictions. More than ten states announced the lifting of various existing restrictions in the […]
Faculty, Governance, cooperation and law, Health, welfare and well-being
The green shoots of COVID solidarity
Rich-country governments must now donate COVID-19 vaccines immediately to vulnerable countries, contribute more to international initiatives to ensure a genuinely global rollout, and work with pharmaceutical firms to deliver more transparent, non-exclusive licensing deals. Only this level of solidarity can restore global growth. In a recent letter to her G20 […]
Faculty, Governance, cooperation and law, Health, welfare and well-being
What we learned from tracking every COVID-19 policy in the world
In March 2020, as COVID-19 swept around the globe, my colleagues and I began debating the bewildering new measures popping up around the world with our master’s students in a politics of policymaking class at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. We had a lot of questions. Why […]
Admissions and Life at the School, Faculty, Health, welfare and well-being
Learning from a real-life, real-time situation: COVID-19 briefings
When the coronavirus pandemic changed everyone’s lives one year ago (March 2020), the Blavatnik School acted quickly to recreate the Master of Public Policy (MPP)’s interactive, personalised teaching style in the virtual classroom. A collaborative effort across the whole School enabled our 124 MPP students (the MPP class of 2019) […]
Admissions and Life at the School, Faculty
Managing a case study discussion in class
To ensure students experience a productive learning environment, instructors must carefully manage the discussion. During the discussion, the instructor leads the class through different phases, often called “pastures.” Typically, pastures have one of four aims: exploration, where the class delves into the key tension of the case study; analysis, where […]
Faculty, Governance, cooperation and law
How India exemplifies the world’s democratic recession
India, long the world’s largest, most diverse and most hopeful democracy, is officially no longer a democracy. For the first time in almost fifty years, the world’s foremost democracy assessor, Freedom House, downgraded India’s rating from Free to Partly Free. The change this marks is considerable. For nearly three quarters […]