PPA 503 – The Public Policy Making Process

PPA 503 – The Public Policy Making Process Lecture 1c – The Basics of Good Writing

Basic Structure of a Memorandum • Background – What problems prompted the development of this memorandum? • Only include the material relevant to the subject of the memorandum. • Issues – What critical issues does this memorandum intend to discuss? • Only include those issues for which you intend to develop arguments.

Basic Structure of a Memorandum • Stakeholders – What individuals, groups, or organizations can affect the policy or are affected by the policy? • Include only those stakeholders that have a significant impact.

Basic Structure of a Memorandum • Discussion, argument, evidence – What arguments or evidence do you wish the reader to consider in analyzing the policy? • Include only those arguments that concern the critical issues identified in the earlier section. • Always consider the potential counterarguments of competing stakeholders. What rebuttal might they make and how would you combat it?

Basic Structure of a Memorandum • Conclusions, recommendations. • Based on your argument and evidence and given the problem definition, what conclusions would you reach, and, more importantly, what recommendations would you make?

Basic Structure of a Policy Paper • Introduction – What policy do you intend to discuss? • Problem Definition: • What conditions exist that suggest that there is a problem? • Why do the conditions represent a public problem rather than a private problem? • Who are the stakeholders who will affect the definition of the problem? • What competing problem definitions might the stakeholders have? • What problem definition appears to dominate your policy and why?

Basic Structure of a Policy Paper • Agenda Setting: • What problem definition appears to dominate your policy and why? • Relying on Kingdon, what combination of problems and politics has brought the issue to public attention? • Who are the key stakeholders? Did anyone act as a policy entrepreneur to get the policy on the government agenda? • What was the issue attention cycle (i.e, did the issue rise and fall in public attention by producing a solution or without producing a solution)? • What was the outcome of the agenda setting process?

Basic Structure of a Policy Paper • Policy Formulation: • Who are the stakeholders? • What are the competing definitions of the policy problem? Which definition is dominant? • Relying on Kingdon, what combination of problems, policies, and politics produce the alternatives? • What are the competing alternatives? • What are the likely outcomes from the implementation of each alternative?

Basic Structure of a Policy Paper • Policy Legitimation: • What competing values must policy-makers maximize for this problem? • Which values dominate the decision? • Who must make the decision? • Is the policy arena for the decision primarily executive, legislative, or judicial? • What is the decision?

Basic Structure of a Policy Paper • Policy Implementation: • What is the policy decision? • What organization or agency must implement the decision? • What resources (human, financial, and organizational) will the organization need to carry out the decision? • How will the agency verify that the implementation was successful?

Basic Structure of a Policy Paper • Policy Evaluation: • What are the goals and objectives of the policy program? • What are the characteristics of the program that will achieve the goals and the objectives? • What methods will evaluators use to assess whether the program achieved the goals and objectives? • Will the evaluator assess the success of the implementation, the impact of the program, or both? • What conclusions has the evaluator reached about the program?

Basic Structure of a Policy Argument • Outline of a problem • Argument • Conclusions. • Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them.

Writing Style • Ultimate goal – clear communication. • However, good judgment should balance the use of rules.

Writing Style • Orderly presentation of ideas. • Continuity in words, concepts, and thematic development from the opening statement to the conclusion. • Punctuation. • Transitional words (pronouns that refer to the previous sentence, time links (then, next, after, while, since), cause-effect links (therefore, consequently, as a result), addition links (in addition, moreover, furthermore, similarly), and contrast links (but, conversely, nevertheless, however, although, whereas).

Writing Style • Smoothness of expression. • Scientific prose and creative writing serve different purposes. Avoid creative writing devices that deliberately introduce ambiguity. • Have someone else read the document or set it aside for several days and reread it.

Writing Style • Smoothness of expression. • Use consistent verb tenses to avoid abruptness. • Use past tense (Smith showed) or present perfect tense (Smith has shown) for literature review and description of procedures if they happened in the past. • Use past tense to describe results. • Use present tense to discuss results, reach conclusions, and make recommendations. • Avoid noun strings. • Poor: Commonly used investigative expanded issue control question technique. • Better: a common technique of using control questions to investigate expanded issues.

Writing Style • Economy of expression. • Say only what needs to be said. • Avoid jargon. • Avoid wordiness. • Avoid redundancy. • Unit length. • Varied sentence length. • Paragraphs longer than a single sentence, but shorter than a page. Paragraphs should cover a single topic.

Writing Style • Precision and clarity. • Word choice – every word should mean exactly what you intend it to mean. • Avoid colloquial expressions and approximations. • Avoid ambiguous pronouns (this, that, these, those, it) when the refer to a previous sentence. Specify what this, that, these, or those are. • Avoid ambiguous or illogical comparisons because of omitted verbs or nonparallel structure. • Avoid inappropriate or illogical attribution. • Do not use the third person to indicate yourself and your fellow researchers. • Do not attribute human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects. • Only use “we” to mean yourself and your fellow researchers.

Writing Style • Three strategies for improving writing style. • Write from an outline. • Set aside the manuscript and reread it after a delay. • Have a colleague critique it.

Grammar • Verbs. • Prefer the active voice. • Use the past tense to indicate an action taking place at a specific time in the past. • Use the present perfect tense to express a past action that did not occur at a specific time or to describe an action beginning in the past and continuing to the present. • Use the subjunctive to describe only conditions that are contrary to fact or improbable.

Grammar • Agreement of subject and verb. • A verb must agree in number with its subject. • The plural form of some nouns of foreign origins may be appear to be singular when they are plural. • Collective nouns can be either singular (if referring to the collective a unit) or plural (if referring to the individual members). • If a subject is composed of a singular and a plural noun, the verb agrees with the closer noun. • If the number of subject changes, retain the verb in each clause.

Grammar • Pronouns. • Each pronoun should refer clearly to its antecedent and should agree with the antecedent in number and gender. • Pronouns can be either subjects or objects. “Who” is a subject. “Whom” is an object. Substitute “he” or “she” or substitute “him” or “her” to determine the correct word.

Grammar • Misplaced or dangling modifiers. • Misplaced modifiers introduce ambiguity. • Put “only” next to the word or phrase it modifies. • Dangling modifiers have not referent in the sentence. • Adverbs can be used as introductory or transitional words, but must be used precisely and sparingly.

Grammar • Relative pronouns and subordinate conjunctions. • Relative pronouns (that and which). • Nonrestrictive (which). • Restrictive (that). • Subordinate conjunctions • While and since (restrict to temporal meanings). • While versus although (use while to link events occurring simultaneously; otherwise, use although, whereas, or but. • Since versus because (restrict since to time; use because otherwise).

Grammar • Parallel construction. • To enhance the reader’s understanding, present parallel ideas in parallel or coordinate form (use the same tense and structure).

PPA 503 – The Public Policy Making Process