Environmental Policy Analysis (2500 to 3000)
Carbon Pricing
Policy recommendations, or simply written policy advice, are the key means through which policy decisions are made.
Whether a policy recommendation is accepted as sound or dismissed in favour of another option largely depends on how well the issue and the arguments justifying the recommended course of action are presented.
POLICY ANALYSIS defines the problem and the goals, examines the arguments, and analyzes implementation of the policy.
Outline:
Executive Summary
- An effective executive summary should reflect the following:
- be written in language appropriate for the target audience
- consist of short concise paragraphs
- begin with a summary
- be written in the same order as the main report
- only include material present in the main report
- make recommendations and provide a justification
- have a conclusion
- be readable separately from the main report
Section I: Identify The policy problem
- This section describes the symptoms, magnitude, and consequences of the environmental problem you are analyzing, and identifies one or more plausible goals for government intervention (i.e. goals for a policy or program).
- Your analysis should convince a thoughtful, analytic reader of the existence and importance of the environmental problem and inform the reader about alternative goals for public intervention.
- You should not approach this as an advocate (watch out for exaggerated claims, etc.) and you should not begin by identifying the lack of a policy or program as the problem.
Your analysis in this section should address the following questions:
- What is the environmental problem to be addressed?
- What was the event or series of events that was a catalyst for action?
- Is it a problem or crisis that demands immediate attention?
- What interests are at stake for the Actor (e.g. the government) overall?
Section II: What are the potential solutions?
- This section describes and evaluates the policy alternatives designed to help meet the policy goals. You are expected to identify alternatives and to identify and logically support criteria by which these alternatives can be compared.
- The alternatives can draw on both existing policies and programs or propose new ones.
This section should address the following questions:
- What alternatives were considered to address the environmental problem?
- Why were the other alternatives rejected? Were they rejected for political or rational reasons?
- Describe the trade-offs policy makers must accept based on your selection.
Section III: What action do you recommend?
- Now that you know the problem, the goals, the alternatives, and advantages of each, your job in this section is to think critically about the implementation realities.
- You will want to consider the political interests and how they are organized, along with the ability to enact policy alternatives.
- It is important to remember that new policies create new politics.
Based on your analysis, make a recommendation for action or, if there is no single “best” solution, compare the relative benefits of the top two alternatives.
Questions to be addressed in this section include:
- Who are the primary stakeholders? What are their interests?
- What is the extent of agreement on goals? What are the potential conflicts?
- What is the possibility for implementing various alternatives?
- What are the consequence of implementing alternate solutions?