When you want to write legislation, there's a specific process that you should follow. A good resolution takes about eight hours to write; a good bill takes about 12 hours to write. There is no way to get around this time investment. Writing sloppy legislation will produce sloppy results and will result in a sloppy, unproductive process.
Step-by-step guide
Here are the steps involved in formulating, drafting, introducing, and (hopefully) passing legislation.
- Determine the issue you want to address.
- Note that "issue" is singular; you never want to bite off more than you can chew.
- The larger a piece of legislation, the larger the target, the easier it is to shoot down.
- Determine the administrators that directly or indirectly impact this issue.
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| title | This is a collaborative process! |
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| Legislating is a collaborative process, and everyone seldom gets what they want. The process is full of compromises, negotiations, tricks, and amendments; but at the end of the tunnel the process is so rewarding. But never get too attached to a piece of legislation—there are a variety of reasons that legislation can die. Sometimes the legislation just wasn't needed; other times the issues was resolved without the legislation needing to pass; sometimes you have the right piece of legislation at the wrong moment. It's a complicated, human process filled with human foibles. |
The Broad Strokes
We can broadly divide the legislative process into five steps:
- Formulation and research;
- Drafting;
- Introduction;
- Negotiation; and
- Implementation.
The policy formulation stage
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