Policy writing skills series: Cultivating a policy imagination
Image: @anikinearthwalker
By Holly Jarman
Your policy writing is only going to be as good as your policy ideas. The quality of your policy ideas is, in turn, dependent upon how well you understand the tensions between individual experiences and motivations and how they relate to social, economic and political systems. In other words, a fundamental prerequisite for writing well is thinking and reflection.
In 1959, sociologist C Wright Mills published The Sociological Imagination, a book that went on to have a significant impact on the field of sociology and the conduct of social inquiry. Mills conceptualized the ‘sociological imagination’ as ‘the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society’, a way of thinking that could be cultivated in order to foster not only better research, but also public engagement.
The Sociological Imagination is just one piece of a wider puzzle and certainly not the only way to think about these issues -although pertinent given its publication date, the book does not engage with the civil rights movement or anticipate the spread of feminist and student activism. But taken together with subsequent critiques, the concept can inform policy analysis and writing by helping us to reflect on the relationship between private problems and public issues.
Many people approaching policy analysis for the first time get frustrated by the ways that the political system works to prioritize some people’s problems in society over others, and narrowly define the range of policy ideas that are considered ‘feasible’ to address them.
Gaining a sense of how policies affect both individuals and society, as well as the political, economic and social systems that shape problems and policy solutions, can be defined as cultivating a ‘policy imagination’ that allows you to consider a wide range of societal problems, policy ideas and their consequences. This can be especially helpful when dealing with big and complex problems with multiple interlinking causes (almost all policy problems!).
Exercising a policy imagination can also help people who want to create change ‘keep the faith’ by remembering the bigger picture reasons for doing what they do. And without a policy imagination, it is more difficult to conceive of how to create lasting, large-scale change -we might continue to adopt the same old policies in the hope that somehow this time we will get different outcomes.
Building on the idea of a policy imagination, here are some useful principles that you can apply to your own work:
Learn all you can from contexts other than your own. Examine what happens in other systems, communities and countries other than your own. Pay attention to the details of history in each case. What policies were adopted and why? What were the outcomes? What are the societal factors and systems that shaped those outcomes?
Diversify your sources of information. The people affected by a particular policy, as well as the civil society groups, advocates and activists that represent them, know a lot about how policies and the political system affect their lives. Make sure you are listening to what they have to say. Similarly, what information, news and research is being consumed by policy elites? Reading what elites are reading can give you a window into their thought process, which is especially useful when you and they don’t agree.
Understand statistics, narratives of lived experience and other forms of descriptive evidence, and learn how to use each of them appropriately. Don’t be beholden to any particular methodology -don’t let methods drive your analysis or choice of problems and policies to pursue. Think deeply about how headline statistics can obscure diversity among individual experiences. Think deeply about how individual experiences relate to those headline statistics. Use both wisely, remembering that you are writing about real human beings.
Understand the status quo in your policy area, without being beholden to it. Learn the basic skills needed to find and understand laws, regulations and policy documents. Figure out the key actors working in your policy area and how they relate to one another. View both actors and the policies they create through a critical lens -what is their position of power within the system? What interest do they have in promoting a particular policy idea or maintaining the status quo?
Criticize your own and others’ policy ideas, analysis and writing. Criticism is healthy! Don’t accept someone else’s definition of a ‘problem’ to be solved in society just because it is popular or widespread. Don’t allow others’ dismissal of a serious problem as irrelevant to change your priorities for action or dampen your motivation.
Give yourself enough time and space for reflection. Exercising your policy imagination takes time and effort. Finding the time and space to reflect can be difficult when under time pressure or facing some of the tough challenges associated with public and policy engagement. Nevertheless, making time to reflect can pay off in the longer term through better thinking, writing and strategic action.
