MA Governance, Politics and Policy

Fees for entry in 2027 have not yet been set. For reference, the fees for the academic year beginning September 2026 were as follows:

• MA (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £16,300
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £29,400
• MA (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £8,150
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £14,700

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

International student CAS deposit

Self-funded international applicants are required to pay a deposit of £2500 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. Some applicants will be required to pay a higher deposit. More information on tuition fee deposits .

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

• Learn more about - student finance options for UK students .
• Learn more about - fees and finance for international students .
• Graduates of The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University can receive a 10% discount on their master's degree tuition fees as part of our Manchester Alumni Loyalty Discount scheme.

Analytical political theory is a fundamentally dialectic, dialogical discipline: the best way of putting an argument to the test is to see whether it can survive the critical scrutiny of other theoretically trained scholars and students.  Our conviction is that this is one of the fundamental skills that post-graduate students in political theory must learn in depth: figuring out how to play the dialectical game at both ends – namely by learning, on the one hand, what is a good, helpful, fair way of probing someone else’s argument; and, on the other, how to revise one’s views, their presentation, or both on the basis of powerful challenges.

 

The course unit aims to:

• Introduce students to the most important methodological disputes in analytical political theory and understand them
• Introduce students to a range of methodologies employed in analytical political theory and understand them.
• Help students adjudicate among these methods, and employ them by critically analysing examples of the latest work in political theory – not just by discussing specific pieces academic work, but also by engaging directly with their authors.
• Introduce students to the fundamental dialectical nature of political theory/philosophy, where asking questions, probing and challenging someone’s work, revising one’s thinking on the basis of one’s reaction to challenges etc. is essential to the construction of sound, rigorous arguments.
• Build students’ confidence and sharpen their capacity for critical thinking and dialectic engagement by encouraging them to critically engage with the authors of the academic pieces they have previously analysed in class.
• Sharpen students’ critical thinking and analytical skills.
• Gain a better understanding of how to present a political theory paper.

The preparatory sessions will be accompanied by an online discussion forum to be set up on Blackboard, to which students will participate in the run up to the sessions (after the text has been circulated).

Critical Reflection-700 words 25%
In class engagement summaries (500 words) 25%
Essay 1800 words 50%
 

• Blau (ed.), Methods in Analytical Political Theory, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
• D. Leopold and M. Stears (eds.), Political Theory: Methods and Approaches (Oxford: OUP, 2008).
• Jo Wolff, “Analytic Political Philosophy”, p. 795-822 in Beaney ed. The Oxford Handbook to the History of Analytic Philosophy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
• M. Timmons, 1987, ‘Foundationalism and the Structure of Ethical Justification’, Ethics, 97 (1987): 595-609.
• Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ‘Thought Experiments’ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment/
• Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?” in Resisting Reality, 221–47 also in Noûs, 34: 31–55.
• James, A. ‘Constructivism, Intuitionism and Ecumenism’, in Olsaretti, S. ed. The Oxford Handbook on Distributive Justice, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Timetable