This course develops students’ knowledge of how policy-making takes place and policies are made in the European Union (EU). It: - introduces principal theories of EU policy-making relating to the main stages of the policy process: agenda-setting, decision-making and policy implementation. - discusses the theoretical claims and observable implications of these theories with respect to EU institutions, policy-making processes and policy outputs, and critically evaluates them from the perspective of empirical evidence provided by political science and public policy research. Different theoretical perspectives and current empirical research are used throughout the course to analyse a number of substantive policy areas.