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Description of Assignment:
The description of the assignment as detailed to the students
is listed below.
PUBLIC POLICY PAPER ASSIGNMENT
OBJECTIVES: This assignment has three major objectives.
The first is to increase your familiarity with an issue of
public policy importance and the arguments that surround that
issue. The second is to increase your familiarity with relevant
sources of information like professional journals and government
documents. The third is to help you improve an important intellectual
skill: writing a clear and convincing argument supported by
reliable evidence. This is a complex and difficult assignment,
and I would like each of you to do it well. To that end, I
have broken the assignment down into pieces and provided explicit
instructions about how you can maximize your success.
ASSIGNMENT: Your job is to write a public policy paper
of 1,500 to 2,500 words exclusive of title page, abstract,
illustrations, notes, bibliography, appendices, etc. Your
paper must deal with a matter of public policy within the
Constitutional power of some officer, agency or institution
of the United States federal government.
PUBLIC POLICY & POLICY PAPERS: A "policy"
is a clear course of action; a "public policy" is
a policy adopted by a government. (E.g., it is the policy
of the United States to intervene militarily wherever America's
national interests are threatened.) A "public policy
paper" is a written document that (1) recommends a public
policy and (2) argues for the adoption of that policy. Your
public policy paper will be developed through four stages.
Stage I-TOPIC DEVELOPMENT: Send an e-mail attachment
addressed to the professor and the Consulting Librarian for
the Social Sciences describing your research topic and providing
a working bibliography for that topic. Selecting a topic requires
only that you identify an area appropriate for inquiry and
susceptible to a public policy recommendation. Your working
bibliography should be sufficient to demonstrate that you
have located and have access to the information that will
be necessary to research your topic. In most cases your bibliography
should include some mix of scholarly books, articles in scholarly
journals, and primary sources such as government documents.
Stage II-THESIS DEVELOPMENT: Send an e-mail attachment
stating your policy recommendation and setting forth
an outline of the contentions you intend to make for
it. Please note that articulating a good policy recommendation
will require you to have already completed much of the research
on your chosen topic. The policy recommendation is the paper's
thesis. The outline of contentions previews your paper's anticipated
structure.
Stating a policy recommendation takes you well beyond topic
selection: you must determine, with some considerable degree
of specificity, what policy ought to be adopted with respect
to your topic. For example, "affirmative action"
is a topic. "Congress should repeal all minority preferences
in federal procurement law" is a policy recommendation.
Your policy recommendation must be within the legal power
of some officer, agency or institution of the United States
federal government.
*This is the point at which trouble most often
arises, so before you submit your policy recommendation and
contentions, examine them carefully using the criteria set
forth in Getting from Topic & Bibliography to Recommendation
& Contentions. Before you organize your contentions
into an outline, consult A Good Argument Is a Hierarchy
of Contentions.
Stage III-POLICY PAPER: Your recommendation and supporting
arguments will be presented in a formal paper with appropriate
manuscript format, proper citations, etc. Remember, you are
being asked to take a position and make a case for it. Papers
that take a position and argue a case are very common at all
levels in law, business, journalism, and government, and good
ones have certain characteristics. They are:
- Convincing: They state a conclusion and back that
conclusion with reasoned argument. The purpose is to convince
the reader, and the better the argument, the higher the
probability of success.
- Well Researched: They are firmly rooted in careful
research. You must have a command of the relevant facts.
You must understand your own position and the positions
of those with whom you disagree.
- Concise: They are not always short, but they must
be concise. Policy papers are meant for the eyes of very
busy decision makers: the judge, the corporate executive,
and the high government official. If you want to convince
such a person, do not waste his or her time.
- Hierarchically Organized: They organize the arguments
to be made into the strongest possible hierarchy of contentions.
Refer again to A Good Argument Is a Hierarchy of Contentions.
Stage IV-REWRITE: After receiving a written critique
of your policy paper, you will rewrite and resubmit the paper
making as many improvements in substance and presentation
as you can manage. As a practical matter, a conscientious
effort to address the technical problems that have been identified
in your paper will preserve your grade. More substantive improvements
will enhance your grade.
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SUPPORTING MATERIALS
Getting from Topic & Bibliography to
Recommendation & Contentions
Your policy recommendation:
The policy recommendation is the paper's thesis, and it differs
fundamentally from the topic I asked you to submit in Stage
I. Selecting a topic requires only that you identify an area
appropriate for inquiry and susceptible to a policy recommendation.
Stating a policy recommendation takes you an important step
further: you must determine, with some considerable degree
of specificity, what policy ought to be adopted with respect
to your topic. For example, "the Equal Rights Amendment"
is a topic. "The Equal Rights Amendment, originally passed
by Congress in 1972, should be repassed and ratified by the
states" is a thesis.
A public policy recommendation is one kind of thesis. It
involves prescription or advocacy with regard to some aspect
of public policy. Logically every policy recommendation must
be a complete sentence communicating that something ought
to be done by some agent of government. Read your policy recommendation
carefully. Is it a complete sentence? Does the sentence state
that something ought to be done? Is the individual or institution
that must act a governmental actor or body? If you can answer
all three questions "yes," you have a public policy
recommendation. If the answer to any question is "no,"
then you need to write a public policy recommendation before
going on to the next step.
Having a policy recommendation is not the same thing as having
a good policy recommendation. Good policy recommendations
are distinguished primarily by specificity. Read your policy
recommendation again. Make sure that what you are proposing
is not something vague to the point of meaninglessness, like
"reform." If what you are proposing is specific
and unambiguous, then you probably have a good policy proposal.
Your outline of contentions:
The key terms here are "outline" and "contention."
An outline is a series of items written or printed together
and arranged in a hierarchy. Your outline will be composed
of contentions. In the sense it is used here, contention means
a statement of fact for or against a proposal. Here the proposal
in question is your policy proposal. Each contention, therefore,
is a statement of fact for (on behalf of) your policy proposal.
Read the first of your contentions. Is it a complete sentence?
Is it a statement of fact? Does it assert that something is
true? Does the truth asserted strengthen the case for your
policy recommendation? You should be able to answer "yes"
to each of these questions. All statements of fact have approximately
the same form. They don't ask questions. They don't merely
identify topics to be covered. They assert a truth. E.g.:
"The plan (the policy / the proposal / it) would reduce
the rate of illegitimate births." "The policy would
be easily enforced." "The benefits would outweigh
the costs." "My policy recommendation is consistent
with the First Amendment to the Constitution." "The
spotted owls will all die anyway." "There is no
record of wolves eating children in the United States."
"Those already rich will receive 85 percent of the benefits."
"Opponents are wrong to argue that the benefits of Head
Start can't be measured past second grade."
Repeat this analysis for each contention on your list. Edit
your contentions until each of them meets the test. Once you
have a complete list of contentions on behalf of your policy
proposal, you need to organize them hierarchically. Please
consult A Good Argument Is a Hierarchy of Contentions.
A Good Argument Is a Hierarchy of Contentions
Visually your hierarchy is a pyramid. At the top of the pyramid
is your policy recommendation. Your policy recommendation
is supported directly by a number of primary supporting contentions.
Those, in turn, are supported by secondary supporting contentions.
The structure of the pyramid is up to you. Only you can decide
how many primary arguments there are for your policy. Only
you can decide how many secondary arguments are required for
each primary argument. At the base of your pyramid, you must
supply the empirical evidence upon which the whole edifice
is built. Textually your hierarchy is an outline. One example
might look like this:
Policy Recommendation (a.k.a. "Primary Contention"
or "Thesis")
- Supporting Contention #1
- Subordinate Supporting Contention #1
- Evidence for Subordinate Supporting Contention
#1
- Subordinate Supporting Contention #2
- Evidence for Subordinate Supporting Contention
#2
- Supporting Contention #2
- Subordinate Supporting Contention #1
- Evidence for Subordinate Supporting Contention
#1
- Subordinate Supporting Contention #2
- Evidence for Subordinate Supporting Contention
#2
- Subordinate Supporting Contention #3
- Supporting Contention #3
- Evidence for Supporting Contention #1
Remember, a contention is a statement of fact for or against
a proposal. Your contentions are statements of fact for (on
behalf of) your policy recommendation. Without supporting
empirical evidence your contention is just an assertion. The
passion with which you believe something to be true is not
evidence for its truth. Show me the evidence! And document
the source!
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