The Art of the Policy BriefERF Training Workshop

September 2016

Romesh Vaitilingam, MBE

Economics writer and media consultant

Bristol, UK: VoxEU, RES, CEP@LSE

romesh@vaitilingam.com

‘Economists occasionally tell

better stories than novelists’

Mario Vargas Llosa, 1989 (in the foreword to

Hernando de Soto’s The Other Path)

Guiding principles of writing policy briefs

Think in threes:

• Defining the message

• Developing the structure

• Getting the words right

Economy of attention

‘…the wealth of information

creates a poverty of attention…’

Herbert Simon, Nobel laureate

One approach to defining a

message

‘Simplify, then exaggerate’

In-house creed of The Economist

Another approach to defining a

message

‘If you want to be reported, make news.

If you can’t make news,

make irresistible phrases.’

Christopher Meyer, former UK diplomat

Message: key questions

before writing

• Audience: who are your key target readers?

• Purpose: what do you want them to take away and do as a result of reading?

• Topic: what’s the main focus; how does it fit into the big economic picture (‘narrative’); and what is your working title?

Who is the audience?

• The global research community

• VoxEU types – economically literate decision-makers

in business, government, international institutions

• FT, The Economist, WSJ, etc. readers

• Educated non-specialists: policy, media, civil society

• The general public

What’s the purpose?

• Policy debate and the policy process – impact and influence

• Problem –> Solution

• Questions –> Answers

• Overton windows – the ideas that policy-makers and the public find acceptable at any given time…

What’s the purpose?

‘Politics is the art of the possible’

Otto Von Bismarck, German chancellor

‘Politics is the language of priorities’

Harold Wilson, UK prime minister

What’s the topic?

• Main focus

• Short-term versus long-term

• Fit with big picture narrative – the overarching story

• Working title

• The teaser or standfirst

Selecting a title

• Main title: the subject matter or the policy

objective, often starting with a gerund (a ‘doing’ word eg creating, developing, building)

• Subtitle: policy options, ideas, priorities to

achieve Objective X – or causes,

consequences, potential policy responses

• Rhetorical questions; clever metaphors?

The ‘teaser’

A paragraph of up to 80 words:

• First sentence sets the context, defines the

challenge, why it matters

• Second sentence summarises the key findings and evidence from other sources

• Third sentence draws out the policy

implications/options/recommendations

A pyramid structure

• Tweet – sub-140 character summary of message

• Teaser – up to 80 word summary trailer/standfirst

• ‘Executive’ summary, bullets, ‘in a nutshell (not an ‘abstract’)

• The full policy brief – perhaps some ‘pull quotes’

• Underlying research reports, literature surveys

Structure of the policy brief

• Title; teaser; summary/bullet points

• Introduction – economic/policy context; key questions to be addressed

• Series of sections with clear sub-heads

• Conclusion and policy recommendations

• Further reading – with links

Introduction

Classic advice on speech-writing applies to policy brief

writing:

‘Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them it and tell them what you’ve told them’

• Outline of the sequence of topics to be discussed

• What are the key challenges, problems, questions to

which this brief provides answers?

The main body of the brief

• Sections (How many? How long?)

• Sequence

• Paragraph-by-paragraph plan – make paras short!

• Tables and charts

• Methodology? Literature review?

Conclusion

• Tell them what you’ve told them – summary

• Key message – concluding statement – should be as

punchy and memorable as possible – ‘what should

happen as a result of this policy brief – the next steps’

• ‘Returning to base’ – link back to opening theme or idea

Tables, charts, diagrams, boxes

• Are there one or two pieces of data that are

particularly illuminating – and can be presented visually?

• Explain properly what a table or chart is showing –

give it a good title – and have explanatory notes underneath

• Don’t overcomplicate charts with too much data

• Boxes can be useful for examples/illustrations

The words we use

• Understanding the audience’s prior knowledge and

therefore pitching at the right level especially in use of jargon and technical terms

• Understanding how words are interpreted by listeners – the need for clarity of expression and argument

• Write in the present tense – ‘our research finds that…’ not ‘… found that…’

Clarity and precision of language

• Language: the simpler, the better

• Shorter words, shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs

• Get to the point – ‘high impact’ writing

• Write in the active voice, not passive

Explaining technical terms/jargon

• Sometimes we have to use them

• If so, take the time to explain carefully when first

used, ideally with an example

Explaining acronyms

• Again, explain them – first time used, spell out

the words in full

• If the words aren’t particularly enlightening – eg

TPP, FSB, MIT – explain what the

organisation/institution/agreement does

Words to avoid where possible

• ‘Available’ or ‘currently available’

• ‘Ongoing’: ugly and generally unnecessary; where it

isn’t, use ‘continuing’

• ‘At the current juncture’: this means ‘now’

• ‘Developments’, ‘dynamics’, ‘shocks’

Words to avoid where possible

• ‘As regards…’, ‘turning to…’, ‘as shown above:

unnecessary signpost phrases or scaffolding

• ‘Economic agents/actors’ = people and organisations

• Split infinitives

George Orwell’s six rules I

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of

speech which you are used to seeing in print

• Never use a long word where a short one will do

• If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out

George Orwell’s six rules II

• Never use the passive where you can use the active

• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a

jargon word if you can think of an everyday English

equivalent

• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything

outright barbarous

Putting it online

• Web version can add hyperlinks

• Web version can use the pyramid structure so

readers can ‘drill down’ from the headline

• Use social media to spread the word

• A Vox for MENA?! A ‘one-stop shop’ for research-based policy briefs…

Extra material

• If time allows…

• ‘Light, layered and linking’ – writing for the information

age

• What accompanies the policy brief – policy seminars,

media briefings, public meetings, audio and video

• Rhetoric…

Using literary and historical

allusions, analogies and quotations

• To catch the attention – power of an image

• To make a serious point

Some rhetorical devices

• The power of repetition

• Comparisons, contrasts, inversions

(but beware of ‘OTOH OTOH’ – on the one hand, on

the other hand)

• Puzzle-solution

• Working in threes

Some rhetorical devices

• Rhetorical questions

• ‘Poetics’ – alliteration, assonance

• Metaphors

(but beware mixed metaphors, such as ‘…the

economic upswing provides a tailwind…’)

Quotations

‘An economist is an expert who will know

tomorrow why the things he predicted

yesterday didn’t happen today’

‘An economist is someone who takes

something that works in practice and

wonders if it will work in theory’

Quotations

‘Economists don’t know very much –

and other people know even less’

Herbert Stein, former chair, US Council of

Economic Advisers

Quotations

‘The art of taxation consists in so plucking

the goose as to obtain the largest

possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.’

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s treasurer

Quotations

‘Cecily, you will read your Political

Economy in my absence. The chapter on

the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is

somewhat too sensational. Even these

metallic problems have their melodramatic

side.’

Oscar Wilde, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’

Quotations

‘Europe exemplifies a situation unfavourable

to a common currency. It is composed of

separate nations, speaking different

languages, with different customs, and having

citizens feeling far greater loyalty and

attachment to their own country than to a

common market or to the idea of Europe.’

Milton Friedman,1997

Quotations

‘The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and

prepare wonderful diagrams.

‘But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from

the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.’

Sir Josiah Stamp (1880-1941)

Quotations‘Committees and commissions numbering

anything up to 200 people, in rooms with

bad acoustics, shouting through

microphones, with many of those present

having an imperfect know of English, each

wanting to get something on the record

that would look well in the press at home.’

Keynes on Bretton Woods

Quotations

‘Global capital markets pose the same

kinds of problems that jet planes do.

They are faster, more comfortable, and

they get you where you are going

better. But the crashes are much more

spectacular.’

Larry Summers, former US treasury secretary

Quotations: central bankers’

irresistible phrases

• ‘Irrational exuberance’, Alan Greenspan

• ‘The job of central banks: to take away

the punch bowl just as the party is

getting going’, William McChesney

Martin

Sourcing quotations

• Part of the brainstorming process

• Quotation websites

• My book! (‘Dean LeBaron’s Book of Investment Quotations’)