Policy Paper

Steps to think of choosing your policy write two pages on point

This assignment is adapted from Roger Fisher, Andrea Schneider, Elizabeth Borgwardt and Brian Ganson (1997) Coping With International Conflict: A Systematic Approach to Influence in International Negotiation. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, pp. 16-27). Learning by doing is good pedagogy in its own right. Thinking like an activist means taking on some responsibility for, and making a contribution to peace and conflict resolution individual decision-makers by focusing on developing ideas that might persuade them to make better decisions on particular issues. The point of concentrating on a real problem is for you to develop a recommendation about what some identifiable person should do in the near future to help cope with that conflict–resolve it, diminish forces that are fueling it, or at least manage it with less waste and suffering to help lay the groundwork for some gradual amelioration and peace building.

Your memo should have two parts to it. The first part is meant to be persuasive, but not one-sided. You might think of it as a discussion paper for your colleagues on a policy-planning staff to be used in an analytical debate. In an orderly and logical way, it should present the analytical steps that have led you to the conclusion that a particular recommendation should be made to a particular person.

The problem to which Part I of your memo is addressed is for example: “Who should do what in the near future with respect to….?” It is up to you choose a conflict at the interpersonal, tribal, national, or regional level on which you choose to work. Your memo presents and analyzes the problem, explaining and justifying in the process the proposal you are promoting. Note that your proposal is not the answer to the problematic conflict you have chosen. Conflicts have solutions only in the following very limited sense: there is somebody in a position of authority somewhere who could take constructive action, however small that step might be. If that person came to you for advice, the proposal in your action memo would be the best advice that you could give.

Part II of your action memorandum is actually a separate package to be prepared concurrently. It is in the form of one or more documents—such as a cover letter, short proposal, draft press release, and talking points—to be transmitted to a decision-maker. The transmission can happen either directly or through an entry point—someone with access who will relay your proposal to the decision-maker, ideally with a recommendation that it be adopted. (For this reason, entry points need to be persuaded that your plan is worth consideration as well). If our hypothetical policy-planning staff agrees with your action memorandum, then your operational documents become the actual pieces of paper you would be sending out; i.e., you would actually mail the cover letter, the one-page summary of your proposal, the draft press release, and the persuasive talking points about how your proposal meets your chosen decision-maker’s interests. There will probably be some overlap in Parts I and II of your action memorandum, but there is a substantial difference between presenting a full analysis that may, for example, include a discussion of why you selected this particular decision-maker and this particular entry point, and drafting the actual operational document that is meant to persuade the decision-maker to approve your proposal.

Steps to Select a Problem and Educate Yourself About It

1) Select a problem: As you narrow your choice of conflict for which to write a proposal, keep clippings of articles relevant to possible situations. Begin to compile a roster of experts, decision-makers, and other relevant players and commentators whom you might subsequently wish to contact.

2) Explore and research the problem: Look at the problem in the way typical partisans on both or all sides see it, and through the lenses of various disciplines—economist, psychologist, and military strategist etc. This kind of partisan perceptions analysis should give you some idea of the opportunities for joint gains through fresh ideas, as well as some sense of the factors you should probably take as given. Interviewing experts—if that is possible—and following up with reading that they recommend should also give you a feel for the important factual parameters of the conflict, of important potential actors, and some possible strategies for resolution or amelioration.

3) Clarify your purpose: There are many goals about which each of us cares, goals such as equality, freedom, health, education, shelter, community, and a chance to use one’s full potential. Since a better world would arguably be more just and more peaceful, and since injustice also often provokes conflict, there is a widespread tendency to confuse the pursuit of a more just society with the pursuit of peace. It is worth highlighting, however, that peace and justice are different goals. One can have a peaceful situation—no fighting, no violence—that is far from just. And it is often the pursuit of justice—or the armed resistance to perceived injustice—that generates war. Conflicts usually involve people pursuing different notions of a just outcome.

In many conflicts you will have an interest in the merits of the dispute. Here it will become necessary to sort out your objective of victory—having your way, producing the change you believe desirable—from your objective of peace—having the conflict dealt with at a minimum cost in terms of human suffering. We are concentrating on our objective of peace—a world in which nations and groups pursue their own values and their own ideas of justice at minimum risk and at minimum cost in terms of bloodshed, confrontation, and stalemate. Victory as such is not our objective, except insofar as the content of a peaceful outcome determines the durability of the resulting peace. We seek to develop and to disseminate less dangerous ways of pursuing victory. If our ideas are to be accepted, they must offer a good chance of success.

A next step is thus to identify your own values, and how they play out in the particular conflict you are studying. The purpose of the advice you are developing should be either: (1) to reduce the risks or costs of that conflict, or, if you prefer, (2) to move toward what you consider to be a more just situation by means that will not increase the risks or costs of the contest.

4) Generate a list of options: Selecting a problem to work on can be a difficult task. The task will be easier if you do it in two stages: First, generate a list of options, and second, select from among them. Start by looking around the world and identifying some disliked symptoms—disliked in the sense that you can readily imagine the possibility of things being better. Take a current situation where bloodshed is a reality or a significant possibility, or take some other conflict situation where resources are being wasted or tensions are multiplying. You may want to consider a government-to-government situation like those involving Israel’s relations with the Palestinian Authority. Or you might select a potential or actual conflict that does not cross international borders such as those in Cyprus, Northern Ireland, or Sri Lanka. Or it might be a problem that by its very nature transcends national boundaries, such as overpopulation, child soldiers, trafficking of children and women, terrorism–the al Qaeda attacks within the U.S., Kenya, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries—global warming, violence against women, drug trafficking, health issues—AIDS, starvation, violence against minority groups and dissidents, or economic conflict between the developing world and the developed world. Or maybe it is a local problem such a food insecurity, police violence, or economic disparity.  Define the long-term problem, as you see it, by writing in the left-hand column of a piece of paper a description of the situation today, and in the right-hand column a description of the situation you would prefer.

5) Choose from among many options: When you have a wide range of options on the table on which you might work, how do you pick a single problem on which to follow through? In intellectual efforts, accurate aim is more important than the magnitude of the charge. You are likely to spend dozens of hours on a project. If you are successful, you will come up with a suggestion that deserves the attention of someone in a position to make a difference. Choose a problem promptly but not carelessly.

(1) Generate some criteria for selection: Think of a list of criteria by which to choose a particular problem. Illustrative criteria are:

How much do I care about the problem?

How much does the issue or subject interest me?

How much information will I be able to find out about it?

How likely am I to be able to make a constructive contribution, however small?

(2) Roughly rank your criteria: Some criteria will be more important then others. “Will I learn a lot?” May be more important than “Do I already know a lot about it?”

(3) Narrow your choices to a few: Look at each problem on your lists with your criteria in mind. Select several promising candidates directly or by process of elimination.

(4) Formulate each of the choices: What aspect of each problem would you work on? What is the symptom you would try to relieve? What would be a preferred situation?

(5) Check on the availability of information: Before analyzing a problem and advancing an idea worth considering, you will need to have factual information and analysis with which to work. It is not necessary that you become the world’s expert on a subject in order to propose a worthwhile suggestion. Busy officials rarely have an opportunity to give sustained, systematic thought over a period of weeks to one aspect of any single problem, however serious that problem may be. There is often significant scope for outsiders to contribute something, but they will still need to know the facts. Do some preliminary research in the library and with interested organizations to establish the availability of information on each problem.

(6) Select a problem: if necessary, reapply your criteria. Use a point system if it helps.

(7) Reformulate your objective: As you focus on a given subject, sharpen your attention to your particular aspect of it on which you want to work.

Select the kind of objective to which you wish to give priority. Keep clearly in mind the problem on which you are working. From time to time come back and check your bearings to make sure that the symptom you are working on is the one you want to cure.

Carefully prepare the action memorandum