A guide for the analysis of policy arguments

Based on what appears to be required for fully supporting a proposal for policy action, a series of interrelated propositional types is suggested as a tool for the design and critique of policy arguments. The kinds of criticisms to which different prepositional types are susceptible and the impacts of these on a policy argument are explored as are the uses persons in different roles might make of these criticisms. Finally, as an example, the typology is applied to a portion of the President's 1973 State of the Union Address.A draft of this paper was prepared while the author was Research Fellow in the Educational Policy Research Center at Syracuse. Suggestions on earlier drafts by Paul P. Van Riper, Warren A. Dixon, and Gerald C. Swanson at Texas A&M University are acknowledged with appreciation.