Events
European Union Governance
Monday, 06.10.2025 | 11:00 am – Wednesday, 08.10.2025 | 4:00 pm (CET)
The European Union (EU) is a powerful and increasingly contested political arena and policy-maker—in EU member states and in the wider world. In this course, we analyse the EU’s institutions, decision-making, and core policies, and we discuss key political and legal challenges.
The course approaches European governance from three angles:
- First, the class introduces the EU’s institutions and their competences, from agenda-setting over legislation to compliance. We explain why the EU’s institutions hold particular competences and how their roles have evolved over time.
- Second, the course analyses core policy-areas, including climate change, global regulation, and fiscal and economic governance. We aim to understand the decisions that have shaped—and still shape—the reach and remit of these policies. Third, the course looks at key issues of European governance, including the rule of law, politicisation, and legitimacy.
- The final part helps participants to comprehend these challenges, and to debate how these could be addressed in an increasingly polarised EU.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Organizational Strategy: Build it with a Policy Partner
Thursday, 09.10.2025 | 11:00 am – Saturday, 11.10.2025 | 6:00 pm (CET)
This EMPA course is designed and offered as part of the Hertie School Policy Lab and provides an intensive, hands-on opportunity for master's students to explore the approaches and dynamics of building strategies for civil society organizations that take on large and evolving public policy mandates. The course focuses on the real-life challenge faced by ISEAL – the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance, a UK based but globally operating membership organization that is the leading advocate for sustainability standards organizations – to build a new strategy.
Throughout the course students will draft a proposal for how this new strategy should look like and in doing so delve deeply into not only the world of sustainability standards but also the intricacies of a membership organization dedicated to building and supporting its’ members’ credibility and capability. Students will work to identify opportunities, analyze potential obstacles, and developing formats for thinking about the role of ISEAL as a meta-governance organization. This is no simulation but very much a real-life exercise, involving meetings and discussion with senior staff and leaders of ISEAL. They will be – at the time we will hold the “Policy Sprint” – right in the middle of their organization’s strategy process, able to react to and take on, as appropriate, insights and proposals emerging from the class.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Workshop in Berlin: Policy-Making & Administration in Germany
Tuesday, 14.10.2025 | 9:00 am – Friday, 17.10.2025 | 6:00 pm (CET)
This newly developed workshop in Berlin offers students the opportunity to experience the German machinery of government and policy-making first-hand and have interaction with Berlin-based experts, policy-makers and practitioners. The workshop aims to help participants to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the German governance system in dealing with key policy challenges (e.g. climate change, welfare and social inequality, digitalisation, Covid-19) and critically reflect on how experiences can be transferred to other government systems. The workshop will combine sessions located at the Hertie School with visits to the Reichstag, Ministries and other public sector organisations.
This workshop is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Social Innovation for Public Purpose
Thursday, 30.10.2025 | 11:00 am – Saturday, 01.11.2025 | 4:00 pm (CET)
The scale of social and environmental problems drives a sense of urgency and frustration with old recipes. These challenges have legitimized a collective quest for new solutions — innovations! With this focus on innovation has come a tendency to adopt the language of markets and business, such as social ventures, hybrid business models, and impact investing. We have also seen increasing interest by policymakers and governments in social innovation as a complementary or possibly competing approach to tackle social problems of public interest. In this course, we will review current debates and new practices in the field of social innovation to assess whether and how innovation is the holy grail of progress and development. During the course, we adopt the perspective of organizations that pursue social ends by relying on entrepreneurial means. We delve into the realities of organizations operating across issue domains and geographies, and carefully examine their approaches to innovation, scaling, and impact. The course will also address social innovation as a relevant topic for the private, social, and public sector.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Strategic & Performance Management
Monday, 03.11.2025 | 11:00 am – Wednesday, 05.11.2025 | 4:00 pm (CET)
The first part of this course centres on explaining the foundations of strategic management. This includes a discussion of what strategy actually entails specifically in a public-sector context, and how strategic planning relates to strategic management. Indeed, strategic planning is perhaps the most popular managerial approach in contemporary organizations – but what is it, how does it fit within a strategic management system and (when) does it actually “work” (or not)? At the heart of this elaboration lies the idea that strategic management is, above all, something managers, policymakers and other professional “do” – and underlying the success of strategic management are the core concepts of strategic thinking, strategic acting and strategic learning. Strategic management should thus be, above all, not a series of fixed “steps” but, rather, a set of tools and approaches that practitioners can draw on, taking into account their context and the issue at hand, and with the aim of achieving better performance.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Looking at the Future: Foresight & Scenario-Building Methods
Thursday, 06.11.2025 | 9:00 am – Friday, 07.11.2025 | 6:00 pm (CET)
In recent years, different forecasting and foresight approaches have been developed in the social sciences that include both qualitative and quantitative techniques, and that have found a wide range of applications. Prominent among them are scenario building and related foresight approaches for developing detailed portraits of plausible alternative futures. They offer policy analysts theoretically informed and methodologically sound knowledge about the challenges and opportunities possible futures might present. These methods form a practical set of tools for gaining better understanding of alternative developments, events and outcomes. The course will review scenario approaches and look at a range of applications. During the first sessions, we will discuss the range of topics of interest to students and develop a work plan for conducting in-class scenario exercises.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Public Affairs
Tuesday, 18.11.2025 | 9:00 am – Wednesday, 19.11.2025 | 4:00 pm (CET)
This intensive two-day workshop is designed for professionals looking to enhance their knowledge of public affairs and government relations. Through interactive sessions, case studies, and hands-on exercises, participants will learn:
- The basics of policy analysis and advocacy campaigns
- Stakeholder engagement to build and manage relationships with policymakers
- Strategies for navigating public affairs challenges and mitigate risks
- How to develop and implement effective public affairs strategies.
Key topics include lobbying frameworks, audience mapping, crisis management, and measuring success. This skills course provides actionable insights and practical skills.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Bureaucracies & Evidence-Based Policy-Making
Thursday, 20.11.2025 | 11:00 am – Saturday, 22.11.2025 | 4:00 pm (CET)
Bringing evidence to policymaking is a critical challenge for today’s policymakers at all levels of government. On the one hand, demand for supporting policy designs and implementation practices with knowledge, information and research is ever-increasing, putting pressure on programme managers and policymakers at various levels to step up their game and be well-versed in the craft of policy research. At the same time, the social, political and media environment makes the rational use of knowledge and research more difficult – knowledge and information becomes contested, ignored and side-lined in a world shaped by the increasingly powerful role of digital media and social polarization.
Debates about evidence-based policy often focus on two worlds: the world of research and the world of politics. This take underestimates the critical role of the bureaucracy in policy-making as well as its various linkages with external experts and advisors; and reforms to promote evidence-based policy often fail to grasp these realities. That is why the course combines insights from research on the role of evidence with those from the world of politics and bureaucracy.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Managing Non-Profit & Non-Governmental Organisations
Monday, 24.11.2025 | 9:00 am – Tuesday, 25.11.2025 | 6:00 pm (CET)
The increased importance of non-profit organizations -- as service providers, as vehicles of developmental or humanitarian assistance, as policy advocates and social innovators, and as instruments of government reform and privatization -- have moved this set of institutions closer to the centre of policy agendas. Yet there is disagreement as to what management model applies to non-profit organizations: is their management basically a version of business management or public management. Or could it be that a separate approach is needed that takes fuller account of their distinct characteristics as value-based organizations with multiple stakeholders and complex revenue structures?
The course will briefly introduce the conceptual background and examine the various theories that have been proposed, and soon focus on organizational governance, performance, management models, and business plans. The course is a mixture of lectures, discussions, and practical applications.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Effective Decision-Making in Government & Business
Monday, 01.12.2025 | 11:00 am – Wednesday, 03.12.2025 | 4:00 pm (CET)
The ability to make effective decisions, design comprehensible decision processes and to understand and manage risk on issues in business and policy fields such as health, education, energy, infrastructure and others is a crucial skill for managers, civil servants and public managers.
More than forty years of applications in decision and risk analysis have shown that building up decision capability enables you to:
- Establish strategic priorities in programs and make more effective use of resources,
- Better deal with conflicting objectives,
- Effectively combine rational thinking and gut feeling in your decision-making, manage risk and uncertainty effectively,
- Gain commitment to the effective implementation of decisions by including internal and external stakeholders systematically in the decision process and
- Communicate more effectively with stakeholders about decisions and risks.
This course cuts across several of the most important decision areas which managers in the private and public sector face: allocate scarce program or project budgets in different business units or policy areas; make trade-offs between financial/economic, ecological and social objectives; evaluate strategic options taking into account conflicting objectives; decide when confronted with uncertainties.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Scenario-Building & Foresight
Thursday, 04.12.2025 | 9:00 am – Friday, 05.12.2025 | 6:00 pm (CET)
Decision-making in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world can quickly become a costly and risky endeavor – especially in the realm of foreign and security affairs. To lower risks in decision-making, to widen decision makers’ perspectives and to provide them with policy options, Foresight Analysis is one of the most powerful analytic methods in an analyst’s quiver. Foresight Analysis helps analysts and political advisors to undertake estimative analysis, which involves thinking systematically about the various ways the future is likely to unfold and what is most likely to determine the eventual outcome. The objective of Foresight Analysis is not to predict the future, but to generate a solid set of scenarios that can bound the range of plausible alternative futures. Foresight Analysis is most useful when a situation is complex and the outcomes too uncertain to trust a single prediction. It has proven highly effective in helping analysts, decision makers, and policymakers contemplate multiple futures, challenge their assumptions, and anticipate surprise developments by identifying “unknown unknowns” – i.e., factors, forces, or players that one did not realize were important or influential before commencing the exercise.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event
Power & Influence: Leadership in Action
Monday, 08.12.2025 | 11:00 am – Wednesday, 10.12.2025 | 4:00 pm (CET)
In a world in which most organizations, communities, and societies face enormous challenges, leadership is critical. This course gets to the core of leadership and getting things done. Power and Influence is a course for those of you who want to make things happen, despite the obstacles that might stand in your way. It is about understanding power dynamics and learning to use them as effective tools for analyzing your surroundings and achieving your goals. During the course, we intend to unearth your implicit theories and feelings about power and influence. These have a profound impact on how you perceive problems and opportunities, and subsequently, how you decide upon particular courses of action.
This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.
On-site event