Teaching comparative and international social policy through the lenses of political economy

While understanding the political economy of social policy is a central component of much social policy teaching, doing so from a truly global perspective can be a challenging task. This chapter explores ways of teaching comparative and international social policy through a broad political economy framework that brings together the approaches from comparative political economy (CPE) and international political economy (IPE), developing a framework based on ‘cross-fertilisation’ where the approaches of CPE and IPE traditionally applied in the Global North/Global South respectively are synthesised. The chapter shows how they can be united in a common - and truly global - framework.The chapter first sets out the shared framework before exploring ideas for teaching practice, with a focus on assessment types.