Romesh Vaitilingam - Economics writer and media consultant ERF Training Workshop on The Art of the Policy Brief Cairo, Egypt , September 25-26, 2016 www.erf.org.eg

1. The Art of the Policy Brief
ERF Training Workshop
September 2016
Romesh Vaitilingam, MBE
Economics writer and media consultant
Bristol, UK: VoxEU, RES, CEP@LSE
romesh@vaitilingam.com

2. ‘Economists occasionally tell
better stories than novelists’
Mario Vargas Llosa, 1989 (in the foreword to
Hernando de Soto’s The Other Path)

3. Guiding principles of writing policy briefs
Think in threes:
• Defining the message
• Developing the structure
• Getting the words right

4. Economy of attention
‘…the wealth of information
creates a poverty of attention…’
Herbert Simon, Nobel laureate

5. One approach to defining a
message
‘Simplify, then exaggerate’
In-house creed of The Economist

6. 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

7. 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?

8. 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

9. 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…

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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?

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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?

17. 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?

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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…’

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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’

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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…

29. 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…

30. Using literary and historical
allusions, analogies and
quotations
• To catch the attention – power of an image
• To make a serious point

31. 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

32. Some rhetorical devices
• Rhetorical questions
• ‘Poetics’ – alliteration, assonance
• Metaphors
(but beware mixed metaphors, such as ‘…the
economic upswing provides a tailwind…’)

33. 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’

34. Quotations
‘Economists don’t know very much –
and other people know even less’
Herbert Stein, former chair, US Council of
Economic Advisers

35. 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

36. 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’

37. 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

38. 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)

39. 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

40. 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

41. 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

42. Sourcing quotations
• Part of the brainstorming process
• Quotation websites
• My book! (‘Dean LeBaron’s Book of
Investment Quotations’)