A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that discusses related issues and makes recommendations for addressing them or making decisions about them. Your white paper will draw on academic research, but it should be written for a lay audience.
Part 1. Introduction/Executive Summary
Summarizes what you will write and puts it into context. Should consist of 3 parts:
Part 2. Background/Literature Review
You will synthesize your sources to provide a comprehensive review of your topic, its background and context. Your literature review should provide a compelling narrative about the importance of your topic/issue to stakeholders and build your evidence-based arguments that you will then use to build your policy recommendations in Part 3. Your literature review will bring together a variety of sources:
Each paragraph of this section represents one aspect of the paper's main focus. Each paragraph should include a topic sentence, evidence, analysis, and a transition sentence:
Part 3. Policy Argument/Solution and Conclusion
Build on your evidence-based arguments from your Literature Review to make a strong argument for a policy recommendation(s). Explain why your recommendations are preferable to other options in terms of feasibility, cost, efficacy, etc.
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