(1) A thesis paragraph telling your reader what you will be trying to show. More detail is generally
better if you have a proposal for action. You can give all of that detail in this paragraph or make it
two paragraphs to fit the detail. If that detail would make this section too long, just tell your reader
that you will be favoring the kinds of measures you will give more distinguishing detail about in your
discussion of what works based on the empirical evidence you present.
A thesis paragraph is important because they help your reader understand what you are up to and they just
make the essay easier to follow.
(2) An explicit statement of the normative principle or principles you are relying on to justify
this answer. This may be a short paragraph, or it may take a bit more than a paragrap
· Several paragraphs explaining the empirical information that you think works together
with your normative principles to justify your thesis.In other words, describe which empirical
claims together with your Normative Principle lead to the conclusion that is your thesis. Empirical
claims should be supported with evidence. Often a general empirical claim will be supported by a
more specific claim about which you can find evidence. For instance, you may say that a certain
policy will be effective – that’s a general claim. And then you can support that claim with a more
specific claim, such as that that sort of policy worked in a particular place in the past or that there
are studies that show that kind of policy is likely to work.
Somewhere in these paragraphs you will want to show your reader how these empirical claims fit together with your thesis to support your conclusion. In other words, don’t leave it to your reader to figure out how the empirical claims fit with the normative claims to support your conclusion. Try to help you reader see the connection. In order to do that you may have to explain some conceptual claims that make the connection tighter.
· A defense of the normative principle or principles you use in your argument.Why should
we act in accordance with the Normative Principle you favor? (This question asks for a defense ofthe normative principle that is a premise in your argument, not another independent defense of the thesis.) This might come right after you tell your readers what your normative premises are, but it could also wait until the end of the paper.
· We will want citations for the evidence offered in your paper, as well as some citation to those who helped you in writing it. The citation format can be any such format you are used to using – different fields use different formats. Some fields use in-text (author, date, page) references to entries in a bibliography collected at the end. Others use a footnote number1providing the same sort of information. If one includes all the needed information in the footnote the paper may not need a bibliography at the end. The important thing is that we be able to look up what you used and figure out who wrote it, and exactly where they said it. Online materials should include a URL, but we should also learn the author, title, publication venue and date for those items from whatever format you use.