Making Public Policy
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this political science course treating policy as an ongoing argument among advocates working inside institutions and cultural frameworks rather than a neutral technical process. Early sessions build a policymaking framework, define ideology, and survey the structure of the American political system. The course then spends its bulk on six case studies: health care, gun control, the federal budget, immigration reform, same-sex marriage, and energy and climate change, using each to show how the same institutional forces produce different outcomes. Materials include the syllabus, readings, and assignments MIT used in the actual class, free to access under a Creative Commons license. There is no instructor interaction or certificate, but the full set of course materials lets a self-directed student work through the same case studies and framework MIT undergraduates covered.