Policy Paper Success: Chapter #2Policy Proposal & Contentions

Example & Review

Random Good Example: What & Why

WHAT = Policy Proposal (Recommendation):• The Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2005 should be reintroduced and

passed in Congress. WHY = Contentions and Sub-contentions (Supporting Arguments):• The federal government has constitutional authority to abolish the death

penalty.• Many groups are opposed to capital punishment.

– Capital punishment has been banned in other countries. – Support for the death penalty has dropped in recent years.

• Capital punishment is inefficient and unnecessary– There is an alternative in life imprisonment– Life imprisonment costs less.

• Capital punishment does not deter criminals or reduce crime.• Capital punishment is cruel

– Many states have outdated machinery.• Many innocents have been put to death, and many more may be.

– Capital punishment is far more frequent in some states than in others.– Not all states require DNA evidence.

Keep policy proposals conceptually simple and specific.

Bad

•Congress should provide greater incentives for states to preserve lands from development.

•Welfare reform should emphasize child care.

•Campaign spending should be restricted.

•An educational initiative should be conducted.

Good

•Congress should prohibit any taxation by states of Indian casinos on reservation lands.

•Congress should abolish the death penalty for federal crimes.

•The United States should pay the back dues it owes the United Nations.

Keep your language direct and concise.

Bad

• Congress should enact legislation to make it a crime against federal law to discriminate on account of race in who you rent hotel and motel rooms to. [27 poorly chosen words]

Good

•Congress should prohibit racial discrimination in the rental of hotel and motel rooms. [13 well chosen words]

Make sure your contentions are contentions.

•Is each a complete sentence?

•Does each assert that something is true?

•Does the truth asserted strengthen the case for your policy recommendation?

Do these examples qualify as proper contentions?

•The plan would reduce the rate of illegitimate births.

•The policy would be easily enforced.

•My policy is consistent with the First Amendment.

•The polar bears will all die anyway.

•There is no record of wolves eating children in the United States.

•43% of the benefits will go to the wealthiest 1% of the population.

•Opponents are wrong to argue that the benefits of Head Start can't be measured past second grade.

• Convert your list of contentions into a hierarchical outline.

• Group your contentions into logical categories. For example:

• economic efficiency — the economic benefits of my policy outweigh the economic costs;

• social efficiency — the social benefits of my policy outweigh the social costs;

• equity or justice — my policy treats people equally; my policy gives people what they've got coming; my policy is fair to all concerned;

• legality — my policy is consistent with the constitution and laws of the United States;

• political culture — my policy is consistent with values which are widely shared in the United States;

• my critics – their arguments are incorrect, unpersuasive, or outweighed by my own.

• Convert your list of contentions into a hierarchical outline.

• Group your contentions into logical categories.

• Among the logical categories that should be considered in an environmental policy paper are the five “E”s:

• Ecology/environment• Economy/efficiency• Equity/equality • Ethics • [A]esthetics

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.

Since a sentence is the smallest grammatical unit that is capable of making a statement, it follows that your contentions must be sentences.

Without supporting 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!

Policy Paper Success:Chapter #3

Kinds of Evidence: Empirical & Expert

Recommendation / Contention / Evidence

• RECOMMENDATION = “The Eastern Gray Wolf should remain on the Endangered Species List.”

– CONTENTION supporting the recommendation = “Population size is critical to survival.”

• EVIDENCE supporting the contention = Empirical study: a nice scientific experiment or analysis that makes the point beyond question

• EVIDENCE supporting the contention = Expert testimony: the opinion of someone whose opinion ought to carry weight

Is this a proper contention?

Make Evidence Work for You

• Demonstrate Its Connection to Your Contention.

• Demonstrate Its Credibility.– How you do it depends to a degree on

whether you are using empirical studies or expert testimony.

– Demonstration of credibility is doubly important with respect to expert testimony because there are likely to be differences of opinion among experts.

Empirical Study: a primary source

• Contention: “Population size is critical to survival.”• Evidence from an empirical study: “The small and

isolated population of wolves on Isle Royale suffers from diseases associated with inbreeding.”– How is this particular evidence relevant to your

contention? [on point, but only one case]– What gives this source credibility?

• Who are the researchers?• What evidence was collected?• How was it analyzed?• Explaining these things gives your argument credibility.

Expert Testimony: a secondary source

• Contention: “Population size is critical to survival.”• Evidence from expert testimony: “A population of 50

or more is adequate for the short term only, and one of 500 is needed to keep the species alive and healthy into the distant future.”– How is this particular evidence relevant to your

contention? [on point and not case specific]– What gives this source credibility?

• The expertise of the “expert.”

Expert Testimony

• “A population of 50 or more is adequate for the short term only, and one of 500 is needed to keep the species alive and healthy into the distant future.” – Melissa Mannon

• Is this a credible expert?

Expert Testimony

• “A population of 50 or more is adequate for the short term only, and one of 500 is needed to keep the species alive and healthy into the distant future.” – Melissa Mannon

• Freshman planning on getting a B.S.S. in Politics and Public Health at Cornell College and a member of the mock trial team.

Expert Testimony

• “A population of 50 or more is adequate for the short term only, and one of 500 is needed to keep the species alive and healthy into the distant future.” – E. O. Wilson

• Is this a credible expert?

Expert Testimony

• “A population of 50 or more is adequate for the short term only, and one of 500 is needed to keep the species alive and healthy into the distant future.” – E. O. Wilson

• Ph.D. in biology from Harvard (1955)• Author (with R.H. MacArthur), The Theory of Island

Biogeography, (1967), which makes him a world-class expert on this very subject.

• Honorary Curator in Entomology of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard.

• Internationally regarded as the “dean of biodiversity.”• Author of two Pulitzer Prize winning books.

Study carefully:

“Getting from Research Question & Bibliography to Policy Proposal and Contentions”

and

“A Good Argument Is a Hierarchy of Contentions”

In your course syllabus.

Having difficulty? Consult Craig.

System Bias

• The organization of politics has consequences.

• The rules, and institutions, and procedures by which we organize our collective life as a nation are never neutral.

• Rather these rules, and institutions, and procedures allocate advantages and disadvantages to individuals and groups.

• The concept of system bias encourages us to explore who is advantaged and disadvantaged and whether those advantages and disadvantages are consistent with our values or with democratic theory or with the values of American political culture.

System Bias in Input Institutions

• Public Opinion & Public Opinion Polling

• Voting & Citizen Participation

• Political Parties, Campaigns & Elections

• Mass Media

• Interest Groups & PACs [tomorrow]

Source: Michael McDonald, George Mason Universityhttp://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm

System Bias

• The organization of politics has consequences.

• The rules, and institutions, and procedures by which we organize our collective life as a nation are never neutral.

• Rather these rules, and institutions, and procedures allocate advantages and disadvantages to individuals and groups.

• The concept of system bias encourages us to explore who is advantaged and disadvantaged and whether those advantages and disadvantages are consistent with our values or with democratic theory or with the values of American political culture.

System Bias in Input Institutions

• Public Opinion & Public Opinion Polling• Interest Groups• Media• Voting & Other Citizen Participation• Political Parties • Campaigns• Elections

Parties & Party Systems

• What kind of party system? [two]– Causes: plurality elections in single-

member districts– Consequences? -- What kind political

behavior are you going to have if you have a two party system?

Parties & Party Systems

• What kind of party system? [two]– Causes: plurality elections in single-member

districts

– Consequences? -- What kind political behavior are you going to have if you have a two party system?

• must compromise to win, must appeal to the middle of the ideological spectrum, relative moderation, minority views go unrepresented

Parties & Party Systems

• What kind of party system? [two]– Causes: plurality elections in single-member districts– Consequences: must compromise to win, relative

moderation, minority views go unrepresented

• What kind of parties? [weak]– Causes: two party system, primary elections, local

elections– Consequences: lack of party discipline, officials better

at representation than governing, harder for voters to hold anyone accountable

System Bias in Input Institutions

• Public Opinion & Public Opinion Polling• Interest Groups• Media• Voting & Other Citizen Participation• Political Parties • Campaigns• Elections

Campaigns

• To whom are campaigns targeted?

• How are they financed?

• What are the consequences?

Elections

• How many are there?• Who is responsible for organizing and

running them?• What is the relationship between registration

and voting?• Who is responsible for getting voters

registered?• What are the consequences?

Source: Michael McDonald, George Mason Universityhttp://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm

Input Institutions

• How can we make them more democratic?

How Does System Bias Change?

********************The Example of Campaigns

and Elections

What Has Changed?From Party-Centered to Candidate-

Centered Campaigns

Campaigns Circa 1900

• Nominations: Who controlled?

• Political Organization: Who controlled?

• Mass Media: Who controlled?

Campaigns Circa 1900

• Nominations: Parties controlled who was nominated.

• Political Organization: Parties monopolized political organization though a system of precinct and block captains held together with the rewards of patronage.

• Mass Media: And parties controlled the flow of information to the voter through daily and weekly newspapers with clear party affiliation.

Campaigns Circa 1900

• What are the consequences?

• What kind of candidate will be successful given the system bias?

Campaigns Circa 1900

• Results: The old system was truly party centered. Parties chose the candidates, determined the issues, disseminated the information, organized and ran the campaigns.

• Candidate: To be successful a candidate had to bend his will to that of the party -- typically serving a long apprenticeship, working one’s way up in the party apparatus ala G.W. Plunkett.

Campaigns Circa 2000

• Nominations: Who controls?

• Political Organization: Who controls?

• Mass Media: Who controls?

Campaigns Circa 2000

• Nominations: We see a party that has lost its power to control who is nominated to primary election voters.

• Political Organization: We see a party whose monopoly of political organization has been destroyed by the rise of countless special interest groups and mass media.

• Mass Media: We see a party whose control of the media has vanished under a blizzard of competition. We see voters who get most of their information from the electronic mass media in 6-second sound bites on the network news and in 30-second spot commercials during campaigns.

Campaigns Circa 2000

• What are the consequences?

• What kind of candidate will be successful given the system bias?

Campaigns Circa 2000

• Results: Today parties appear to be at the mercy of candidates rather than candidates being at the mercy of parties.

• Where the presidency is concerned, a national convention meets and approves a platform. Then, like robots, the delegates cast their votes, and the winner in the primaries and caucuses becomes the candidate.

• The party's platform is forgotten. The candidate's views are what counts, and they may change from day to day in response to the perceived needs of the campaign.

Campaigns Circa 2000

• More Results: Modern campaigns are candidate-centered, and each candidate must rely on her own resources. It is the candidate who:– assembles an organization.– invents a platform. – produces media and buys broadcast time. – raises the money. – hires the experts who have displaced party functionaries in all

these areas. – pays the bills.

• Money is the first primary. Regardless of party, the voters are generally allowed to chose only among the candidates who have been pre-approved by wealthy contributors.

Campaigns Circa 2000

• Candidate: – Favors incumbents who have all the advantages of name

recognition and the perks of office.– Favors political outsiders who have high name recognition:

Ronald Reagan (actor), Arnold Schwarzenegger (body builder turned actor), Jesse Ventura (professional wrestler), George W. Bush (president’s son), Al Franken (humorist).

– Favors people who are handsome and glib, a candidate who is good with a sound bite and looks good saying it (Barak Obama).

– Favors people who can raise humongous sums of money. (Hillary Clinton & Barak Obama). And it helps to be fabulously rich yourself (Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, & Mitt Romney).

– Disfavors George Washington Plunkett, et al.

How Does System Bias Change?

• Change the rule, institution or procedure.

• What is the most persistent cause of change in the rules of government & politics?

• Change the context. Change the environment.

• What is the most persistent cause of change in the environment of government & politics? The most obvious reason that things are different now than they were 100 years ago?

How Does System Bias Change?

• Change the rule, institution or procedure.

•What is the most persistent cause of change in the rules of government & politics? --- POLITICS

• Change the context. Change the environment.

•What is the most persistent cause of change in the environment of government & politics? The most obvious reason that things are different now than they were 200 years ago? --- TECHNOLOGY

What’s Behind the Shift from Party-Centered

to Candidate-Centered Campaigns?

• POLITICS: “Progressive” Party Bashing– Primary Elections– Civil Service– Initiative, Referendum & Recall

• TECHNOLOGY– Electronic Media– Specialization of Campaign Functions