General Instructions: This document provides the exact template for the policy memo assignments. Your memo should include a memo header, executive summary, background summary, analysis of the issues, review of options, recommendation, arguments and counterarguments, and conclusion. You are limited to four double-spaced pages, excluding source citations. You should use four pages—no more, rarely less. Because you are limited to four pages, consider the most efficient methods to convey necessary information: charts, bullet points, tables, graphs, or text. Please use a consistent citation style. Given the page limit, endnotes are best. Use 1-inch margins and 12-point font.
In preparing your memo, consider your reader. What does the reader already know? What does your reader need to know to understand your analysis and recommendation? Because policy memoranda are brief–no more than a few pages—avoid restating the obvious or discussing at any length that is well known or well understood by your reader. Your job is not to tell the reader everything that you know on the issue; it is to tell the reader what they need to know to make a policy decision.
TO: 501 Students, Fall Term 2023
FROM: Devin Judge-Lord (Please use only your student
ID for the version of the first policy memo you submit on
Canvas.).
DATE: September 1, 2023
RE: Policy Memo Template
The rest is double-spaced (excluding references)
Executive Summary: Your executive summary should be brief. It should state the problem, provide an overview of your memo’s organization (e.g., the cause of the problem, options for addressing it, and goals/criteria you use to analyze these options), and summarize your recommendation.
Background Summary: Your background summary should provide a brief history and context of the problem addressed. It might include a few facts to lend a sense of the magnitude/scope of the problem if your audience is not aware, but it should also discuss what we know about relevant policy tools, especially from the social sciences (economics, sociology, political science, law, management studies, policy studies). Background summaries generally answer who, what, and when questions and provide facts on which there is general agreement. Inclusion criteria: Is it necessary for this policymaker to (1) understand the issue or (2) decide among the options? In a good policy memo, there is no room for evidence that is not essential to the ultimate analysis (even if it is super interesting!).
Issue Analysis: Your memo must include an analysis of the problem. This involves how and why questions that focus our attention on a cause that might be targeted by policy. Why do these problems exist? How did it come about? Why have policymakers not already addressed this problem? Why is it important to develop strategy and policy around this problem? This is where you tell a causal story about the problem and its politics. Implicitly, at least, this story allocates blame. Who are the stakeholders, and what positions have they taken? Who might be mobilized to block policy, and who who might mobilize to help? You don’t need to cover all of the reasons that they exist, but your analysis should focus our attention on at least one very specific key cause of the problem that might be a target of policy intervention. This focuses us on stakeholders/politics that need to be addressed in the options and recommendations and should lead you to criteria by which to evaluate policy options. You may include charts, tables, bullet points – whatever most concisely lays out information about how the problem came to be (its causes) and the likely consequences of maintaining the status quo and of making change.
Options: In this section, briefly present the top policy options, along with a concise but systematic discussion of pros and cons, costs and benefits, or arguments and counterarguments for each. Systematic means that you compare options on all of the criteria (the things your issue analysis concludes are important). The more that your options are true alternative courses of action, the easier it will be to compare them systematically. The most useful comparisons present hard choices where the conclusion is not obvious (and thus requires policy analysis). Don’t include ridiculous options or straw persons that are easily dismissed—these are not helpful. The options that you do not recommend should be the next best things the policymaker might do. You may use bullets, charts, tables, or whatever format conveys viable options with an assessment of each.
Recommendation: This is the heart of your memorandum. The recommendation should logically flow from the issue analysis and comparison of options. Explain why the option you recommend presents the best strategy. Be clear in discussing strategy implementation: Are you proposing a multi-step strategy/solution? Are there unknowns or contingencies that might arise in a way that may alter the course?
Conclusion: Here is your one brief opportunity for rhetoric. A conclusion should not rehash what you’ve written. You might, in one sentence, summarize your recommendation and give it a sense of weight or urgency. This is your opportunity to leave your audience with some compelling impetus to act on the problem by adopting your strategy. Use the conclusion to catalyze your audience.
References do not count toward the 4-page limit and should be single-spaced. References must be hyperlinked wherever possible. Please try to link to stable public URLs. For journal articles, DOI URLs are best (e.g., https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026619858874), then some other stable repository like JSTOR or the publisher’s web page (e.g., https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7t5st or https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1086026619858874) if you can’t find the DOI URL.
We will be checking to make sure that the source is appropriate for a policy memo (i.e., likely to be perceived as legitimate by your audience) and that it supports the claim made in the text of the memo. Fabricated sources are unacceptable, and the relationship between claim and evidence is critical.
1. Structure matters: Every year, I see brilliant students do a ton of good research but still write ineffective memos because they did not follow the template. A policy memo is not a research paper. A memo is the result of taking a 14-page research paper and refining it into 4 pages that a policymaker can digest in the 10 minutes they have before their next meeting. The template forces you to refine your writing to its essential points. This does not diminish the importance of research; good research is critical. A policy memo conveys the essential points, citing the research in which it is grounded.
2. Know your audience: First, they must see themselves as having the authority to take the actions you propose. Be very explicit about what authority you are expecting them to use and how. As the history of the commerce clause shows, the legality of major policy changes is often debated. It is fine if your proposal falls in the legal grey area at the boundary of a policymaker’s presently recognized authority. You just need the policymaker to see it as worth their time, even if their legal authority is uncertain. However, our existing legal institutions and the power allocation embedded in those institutions is a major constraint on pretty much every policymaker, especially the more local ones to whom we have the best shot of being useful. Thus, legal structures, while malleable, are real constraints on the options we propose because they have to be options perceived as worthwhile by busy and pragmatic policymakers. Memos are not an exercise in crafting theoretically ideal policies. They are exercises in practical policy craft. This does not mean that we cannot be creative and innovative, but it does mean that we are highly constrained by institutions as they are and by the people who occupy them.
Be clear about what you are asking them to do. Some people (legislators) have the ability to propose legislation. Agency officials do not.
Second, all policymakers have passions, priorities, and stakeholders that affect the relevant facts, framing, and recommendations. To influence people, you must know what they care about and believe.
3. This is not a campaign or talking points memo: You are helping policymakers make policy, not write a speech. They want solid evidence from reputable (ideally peer-reviewed or government) sources. The goal is to help them make effective policy, not to accrue power.
Public policy is inexorably linked to questions of power. Other classes cover how power shifts. This class is about policy: “statements of what the government intends to do.” Of course, policy emerges from politics, but it also involves evidence. Political debates define problems, goals, and agendas, but to achieve any goal through policy, evidence about the effects of different policy tools is indispensable. Evidence must come from a source that your audience will trust. Good evidence also ought to be convincing to reasonable opponents of one’s policy goals. Your aim is to win over the policy wonks.
4. How to distinguish background facts from issue analysis: We might distinguish evidence about the state of the world (problems and conditions) from evidence about causes (see Bardach on causal models and Stone on causal stories). Both types of evidence are needed to assess options against evaluative criteria (the real policy analysis that gets us from options to a recommendation).
5. Implementation options as options vs. part of a recommendation: There are multiple ways to implement a policy proposal. If you take a broader policy direction as given, questions about implementation can be options to analyze (e.g., “What is the best source of funding for this policy?” or “Should we start with a pilot/demonstration project?” or “on what timeline should we roll this program out”). In this case, your entire memo is just about one aspect of implementation of a policy direction that you have good reason to believe that the policymaker wants to (or is planning to) implement.
Alternatively, implementation questions might be addressed in a less analytic way in the recommendation section of a memo, where the analysis section focuses on comparing broader policy options. Here, the heart of your analysis is about choosing which policy direction to take, and your advice on implementation is more about suggesting ways to do the thing your analysis recommends. You might suggest that they start with a pilot program, utilize a certain source of funding, or roll out the program on a certain timeline as advice that is more about suggesting helpful ideas than systematically analyzing the pros and cons of this or that implementation strategy.
Either type of memo is fine. Which is better largely depends on where the policymaker is at. Have they already committed to a new policy direction and new help figuring out how to implement it? Or are they struggling with which direction to go, and once they make that choice, how to do it is more straightforward?
6. Take advantage of free help: Librarians have superhuman abilities to find good sources for you, especially our dedicated Public Policy Librarian, [ Shevon Desai. The writing center can help you better communicate your points (writing can always be clearer). Free spelling and grammar checkers like Grammarly can help you avoid silly mistakes that can make your writing hard for others to read.
Clarity
Formatting
Background research
Major: No research specific to the memo’s particular topic beyond what the policymaker already knows.
Minor: Relevant research on the problem, but not on policy tools.
Inclusion criteria: Is it necessary for this policymaker to (1) understand the issue or (2) decide among the options? Very few memos had enough of this second type of information.
Most memos can use less background on the problem and more background research on policy tools, especially from the social sciences (economics, sociology, political science, law, management studies, policy studies).
The best memos are usually the most narrowly focused (a narrowly focused problem definition also makes for easier research) and draw on academic studies of policies/programs implemented in other states. This has the advantage of synthesizing lessons learned (unlike information on another state’s website, academic research is written for an external audience like you) and provides an external analysis of the politics and challenges that may often be missing from reports from the people on the ground.
Analysis
Major: There is little analysis of why this problem remains unsolved, only statements about the general causes or nature of the problem that the policymaker already knows and/or little discussion of stakeholders.
Minor: There is a discussion of stakeholders and a focus on specific causes of the problem, but the lessons for how we should then evaluate options are not clear.
Almost every memo I read needs to focus more on why we are in this situation. Why do these problems exist? You don’t need to cover all of the reasons that they exist, but your analysis should focus our attention on at least one very specific key cause of the problem that might be a target of policy intervention. Why have policymakers not already addressed this problem? This focuses us on stakeholders/politics that need to be addressed in the options and recommendations.
Options
Major: Options are vague, and/or pros and cons are not robustly addressed.
Minor: Pros and cons are addressed, but not systematically to facilitate comparison.
Ask yourself: Are these alternative paths to address the problem that I am focusing on? How do they compare to each other across all criteria that my analysis shows are important for any solution to address?
Recommendation
Major: It is unclear why you chose the option you chose.
Minor: It is clear why you chose the option you chose, but more details are needed on implementation.
The issue memo is your opportunity to set the agenda for this course. It is also a chance to learn about how political authority is distributed in the U.S. federal system.
You will craft a 1-page memo on the following question:
What are the most pressing water quality issues in the Great Lakes region? Please identify three issues and three local, state, inter-state, tribal, inter-tribal, or U.S. federal officials who are in a position to advance policies addressing each issue.
NO HEADER
Single spaced
A sentence or two about each issue and three bullets with a sentence or two about each policymaker:
Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
The purpose of this memo is to guide your roundtable presentation and your responses to questions. It should be formatted as groups of short bullet points under concise headings. It may or may not follow the outline of the policy memo. You may separately want to write out and practice your entire presentation (I suggest you do). You can bring a script, but try not to read from it. Instead, use the talking points memo to keep you on track. The talking points memo will help you address the most important points in the most concise language, both in the presentation and in responses to questions.
The job of a talking points memo is to prepare yourself, a boss, or a senior colleague for a meeting—in this case, a public hearing with policymakers who will ask questions.
Your talking points must fit on one page . Please follow the formatting guidelines below, which is good practice because most policy institutions require adhering to similar standards.
Talking points take several forms. The most common is a single page of bullet points grouped into a few major categories. Your memo should be about 50% points for your presentation and 50% points for addressing likely questions. Even if you do not follow the outline of your policy memo, your points should take a clear position on the key issues, including the cause of the problem (problem definition/causal story), the pros and cons of options, the justification for your recommendation(s), and precisely what the policymaker(s) should do.
Talking points should read like a script so that you or your colleague can read them aloud if necessary, but not the entire script—just the most important points. They should help you if you get stuck. Policy professionals typically keep the points in front of them on a lectern or folder as a meeting or public appearance unfolds.
Headers and points are often complete sentences but do not have to be. However, neither headers nor points should exceed two lines. Say it in one line if you can. Use 12-point font, 1-inch margins, and enough space between points to make them easy to read.
You do not need to cite sources for your talking points unless you want to mention the source as evidence or authority for your claims.
*Some of these instructions were adapted from John Ciorciari’s talking points memo instructions.
This is an approximate outline; your needs may vary.
NO HEADER (no name, date, etc.)
Single-spaced, 1-inch margins, mostly bullet points, some headers
Two line summary. B.L.U.F.
[Existing policies won’t fix this.]
[Analysis, i.e., why policies will fail and/or why we have failed to make adequate policy]
Thus, we need policy that [criteria].
I investigated [3] policy options, [Option 1], [Option 2], [Option 3] (You don’t need to review all of the options in your policy memo. Do so only if you think it adds value.)
I recommend [specific action that the people you are addressing can take]
[Question 1]
[Question 2]
[Question 3]
[Question 4]
[Question 5]
There is no required number of questions; in this half page, try to balance having something to say about more possible questions with making sure you remember the key points of each answer.
In this second half of the memo, both questions and points are probably best kept to one line.
[Public policy research guide](https://guides.lib.umich.edu/publicpolicy()
The Art and Science of Framing and Issue
Writing theory-driven policy analysis by Paul Cairney
Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. 1995. The Craft of Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Chapter 7: “Making Good Arguments: An Overview,” pp. 88-93.
From Electronic Hallway: “Memo Writing”; “Brief Guidelines for Writing Action Memos”; “Writing Effective Memoranda: Planning, Drafting, & Revising.”