Image from here.
Policy argumentation involves several steps:
First, identifying the issue (the stasis). This is where so many arguments go wrong—our impulse is to make all issues personal, and either about whether we are being respected enough, or whether our in-group is being respected enough.
Shifting the issue to other stases thus helps us get out of who in the argument is the better person.
These are better stases:
Need:
• What, exactly, is the problem?
• Is it serious?
• Will it go away on its own?
• What caused it (what is the narrative of causality)?
Plan:
• What, exactly, is the plan?
• How will that specific plan solve the problems identified in the need (solvency)?
• Is the plan feasible?
• How does this plan compare to other possible solutions?
• Will there be unintended consequences worse than the need?
Most of our political discourse is about the need, and there isn’t even an attempt to connect the plan with the specific need.
One of my favorite examples of the ways that policy arguments go wrong is when a Texas state legislator proposed banning “suggestive cheer leading.” His need was that teen pregnancy is bad. And it is, and it’s persisted long enough that it will not go away on its own. But his narrative of causality made no sense—he couldn’t possibly claim that teens only had unprotected sex because they were driven wild by cheerleaders.
The plan of banning suggestive cheerleading had no real details; there’s no reason to think it’s feasible—how would the term “suggestive” be defined, how would it be enforced, who would enforce it? Cheerleading can lead to college scholarships, so if the standards hurt students’ abilities to compete effectively, it could have unintended consequences of hurting Texas cheerleaders’ chances of getting college scholarships.
Where the plan thoroughly fails is in terms of solvency. Texas cheerleaders could be required to lead cheers in personal tents, and it would have no impact on teen pregnancy. None.
There are other plans for reducing teen pregnancy, many, and many of them are much better in terms of all these stases.
So, his case completely fails as far as policy argumentation, but it has a certain cunning rhetorical power. It’s hard to point out that this is a stupid argument without sounding as though you’re a perv who wants to watch teenage girls dance suggestively and don’t care about teen pregnancy.
And that’s how most people hear policy arguments. We focus on need; we need to keep in mind all of those stases.