Arms Length Writing for Policy Audiences

The challenges: Identifying and understanding the limits and failures of policy expertise, as well as the role and nature of policy ignorance when engaging with policymakers, while acknowledging that policymakers who work in the field of economics are often under a great deal of pressure to get things rightApproaching issues as a political economist and…

Background and Policy Setting Catherine Herrold studies how local civic actors—including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), grassroots groups, and philanthropic foundations—promote economic development and democratic political reform. Her first book project examined how leaders of Egyptian NGOs and foundations understood the concept of “democracy” and promoted it in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. In…

The challenge: How to advise on complex phenomena (creating cybersecurity norms) when the narrative surrounding them is oversimplified. In particular, it is difficult to explain to policymakers the intersubjectivity of norms and their sociological basis in a way that is immediately policy relevant. The “problem” in question often involves many dimensions not related to norms…