Introduces an important question about a particular topic that has policy or political implications. Collects, analyzes, and presents evidence that will answer the question, focusing especially on cause and effect. Your decision-maker has to understand what the issue is before they can understand what policy response might work to deal with it (that policy response will come in your second paper). In essence, you need to ask what is going on in this topic and then research and find a broad range of evidence to answer that question. To use a current example, what is causing the wave of opioid overdoses in the United States? Why do people overdose on opioids? How has the number of overdoses changed recently? You might research those questions by looking at the rate of overdoses over the past few years, reading accounts by addicts, police officers, and others affected by opioids, by interviewing experts on the matter for their insights, and by reading the scholarly literature on the issue. Your evidence should be drawn from a broad range of different sources, and should include both primary and secondary evidence (we will talk about what each of these are).
Once you have answered the question in detail, you should define a variety of its characteristics. In this section, you will define the problem you see in it specifically, identify stakeholders, decision-makers, and timeline, and create a goal for that problem. Finally, you will argue that this is important enough for the decision-maker to pay attention to it. You want to convince a hypothetical decision maker that this is a problem they should care about and about which they should do something. To continue with the opioid example in the United States, you would specify that the number of overdoses is too high (the problem) talk about who is affected, not only the addicts, but their families and communities (stakeholders), who should do something about it, perhaps the governor of West Virginia, the most affected state (the decision-maker), argue that a good end situation would be to reduce the number of deaths by 50% in the next five years in West Virginia (goal and timeline). Finally, you would point out that stakeholders are constituents of the governor and thus his responsibility to protect. Much of this will naturally evolve over the course of the semester.
